So this is my first forged knife. I made it from a hc railroad spike, I bought 8 of them off of eBay, so I'm pretty sure I'm in the clear on it. 

Over all it went pretty good. I drew out the blade from about 2 inches and then rough shaped the edge and the curve of the blade. I twisted the handle, which had my go get a bigger pipe wrench to do, and got it all lined back up with the blade. Then I let it anneal for an hour before heat treat, got it up to non magnetic and dunked it into canola oil, slashing through the oil slowly. My file scatted across the blade all the way along it. 

My 1x30 belt grinder made pretty short work of cleaning it up and shaping the edge. I went from 50 to 80 to 120 grits and then ran it across a fine diamond sharpener. I want to buy some finer grit belts for my grinder and a leather stropping belt too, So I'll be going back to sharpening it up some more.

I tested it by beating it on a chunk of 3/4 inch plywood and it held up well. Then it made short work of slicing up some cardboard and stabbing though my soda bottle. It's not shaving sharp yet, but I hope to fix that

I like it. Looks like a handy little skinner. While they can be hit or miss, (or maybe just mostly miss) I have seen some HC spike knives that get hard enough to hold an edge and have good utility. Nice job!

I just received three from a friend in the States.  I sent him 3 railroad screw like they use here.

I was a bit worried about the edge retention, but it seems to have held up well enough. I was more interested in forging a blade than making a high quality piece, but it seems to have came out pretty good. I'll be putting a finer edge on it Wednesday or Thursday when my new belts come in and then I'll be putting it through it's paces to see what improvements I can make.

I wasn't going for a skinning knife, just a nice curvey knife because that's my style. I honestly think this one might be a little too thick to work as a proper skinning knife.

On 2/18/2018 at 8:25 PM, genesaika said:

excessive and un needed quotes removed

That is a very nice knife.  Especially one that was made from a railroad spike.  If I had access to them Id probably have a stock pile of them myself.  But again it looks good.

AndrewB , please only quote the part of a comment that you’re replying to, and only include photos if you’re referencing something that can’t be easily described. Big chunks of text and photos eat up bandwidth and make it harder for our members with dial-up to read the forum. Thanks.