First Forge Build - I don't know what I'm doing.

[JeremyMcG]

Well, it's getting there.  I only have about 30-45 minutes every other day as it is now to do hobby stuff.  

Heated it back up and worked on the tip profile a bit and drew out the handle a bit more. 

I'm not a fan of the knife in general.  But, keep in mind - it's my first.  I ---was-- going for a camp-knife design, but as it got thinner and thinner, that went away.  It is what it is.  
The edge geometry will be a very long flat-grind V-edge.  I'm limited by what equipment I currently have and the fact that I've hammered it thin to begin with.  
Chance are, that when I put scales on this monstrosity, I will cover the indents and not sand the handle down in those areas...remains to be seen.  Anyway - first attempt.  I'll get better as time goes on. 

[JeremyMcG]

So,  I just did what I was told I couldn’t do without a ton of practice.  I forge welded three pieces of 1095 bar stock together into a single billet.

This was three pieces of 1/8th x 1/2 x 12 1095.  As you can see in the pictures, it's a nightmare of a mess - but BY JOVE it appears that the last 3 inches are, in fact, a solid piece.  

There was so much scale on it that I couldn't see if it were sticking, but since it wasn't flying apart, I kinda felt like it was working.  Didn't know until I took the grinder to it.  

Tomorrow, I'll heat this up again and finish it - but I actually impressed myself today.  

 

Oh, and I still don't have an anvil.  I did this by clamping a trailer-hitch receiver to my workbench and using that.  

 

[Frosty]

Nobody said you couldn't try. Good pics demonstrating why practice is so important. You do realize the edges get hotter than the center so grinding the edge doesn't demonstrate a good weld. If you take a hack saw and cut it in half through the welded looking section you might actually have a welded section or not. You just can't tell by grinding the edge. Sure some of the experienced guys might do that if they have a question about a weld but something in the process will have raised the question. 

Don't give up but I STILL recommend you use less expensive steel to learn billet welding. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JeremyMcG]

That's fair.  

I was just impressed that I managed to get them to not fall apart.  

After watching hundreds upon hundreds of videos on forge welding, and most using a power hammer, I was thinking that me, my 3lb sledge, and my trailer hitch didn't have a chance of making it work.  Just getting the pieces to lie together and not curl up like I've seen on videos where the process failed was a win in my book.  

I'll finish this tomorrow then cut it in half and take a look at the cross section to see what it looks like.  If it's all good, I'll try forge welding those two pieces together...

[Frosty]

The first time I got a weld to set I beat it till it wasn't usable and I still have that bit of WELDED thing somewhere. Feels good doesn't it?

Stop paying so much attention to Youtube it's a public forum for people who want to demonstrate how little they know about most anything. Buy a book or check one out at the library.

Stock that thin is hard to get to heat without warping. Next time turn the forge way down, when the billet is the same color as the forge turn the fire up a LITTLE. Bringing the heat to welding temp slowly helps control the effects of different rates of expansion between the outer and inner layers. Thicker steel is less likely to warp.

You'll get there, we'll help.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JeremyMcG]

Well, while I wait on my handle spacers to come in for the Pirate Knife - I decided to grab that monstrosity of a forge weld I did and attempt to turn it into something.  

I'm still awful at welding - but this was done a few weeks or so ago - I've gotten moderately better since then. 

This was also a couple weeks ago - I've since really managed to get the welds to hold.  It truly is a single piece of steel now. 

So the basic shape is starting to appear.  Tips of knives give me issues.  Most likely an equipment limitation, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.  This is 3 pieces of 3/8" 1095 steel.  Leaving the spine thick and trying to hammer the blade thin is a lesson in hammer control. I've not shaped anything with the grinder at all. 

A little more work on thinning the blade edge.   No grinder used as of yet, except to cut into it to see if the welds held. 

I'm even managing to keep it fairly straight during the hammering. There is an axis twist - not sure how that happened and I need to think on how to fix it.

It looks serrated.  My hammers aren't the best, but honestly, it looks worse than it feels - most of that is scale that will come off.  Going to toss it on the belt sander later today, remove the scale and look for cracks.

[ThomasPowers]

Dressing the hammer face and checking the height of your anvil was what came to my mind looking at that.  BTW you do know how to deal with the curve you get pounding in a bevel, right?

[JeremyMcG]

5 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

 BTW you do know how to deal with the curve you get pounding in a bevel, right?

 

I do not...  

Halp plz? 

[ThomasPowers]

2 common methods: one is to prebend it the other way so when you start hammering in the bevel it straightens out.  The other way is what I tend to use and that's on a regular basis get a good heat on the blade and place it on the anvil arch up and tap the edge to get the spine to go down flat on the anvil.  If you are worried about hammering on the edge you can use a wooden mallet to do the tapping. I use my hammer.

[JeremyMcG]

Thanks - I'll try those on the next make. 

So, I went back to the first knife shaped object I attempted.  Decided to finish it.  It's too thin to be a camp or utility knife - but it wouldn't look too terribly awful on my mantle.  

 

d

Had a successful quench.  Got the guard peened and affixed tight. 

Did a temper in the oven and started on the scales.  Attempted to answer my phone while working with the epoxy...that didn't work out well. 

Started to rough shape the handle.  I still need to round the tang tail, thread it and make a pommel.  

Overall, about a million mistakes - but this was absolutely the first knife I've ever made - and more significantly - the first thing I ever attempted to forge...  

[ThomasPowers]

Have you looked into "draw filing" ?  A low tech method of getting a much better look to the blade and putting in quite nice smooth bevels.

[Daswulf]

You can always look back on it as your first and how much you improve from there. 

I'll second Thomas on draw filing. 

I'm wondering why you are forge welding the pieces of 1095 together instead of getting a piece closer to the size you want and forging that. 

[JeremyMcG]

I'll research the draw filing.  Thanks for the tip. 

As far as the forge welding of the 1095 - its mostly because I wanted to see if I could.  The vast majority of videos show it being done with a press.  I wanted to see if I could do it.

I don't have an anvil.  I have horrible hammers.  I was using TINY block of bench steel clamped to my, well, bench.  I didn't think there was even a small chance that I could make it work - but apparently, I did. 

Also - I'm 99.8% done with my absolute first knife shaped object.  

It's entirely too thin (this was a single 3/8" piece of 1095) to be used for anything other than saying "ARRRRR" when I'm slicing a tomato - but it's my first.  I only used a grinder on the tang.  Everything else was hammer forged. (And the handle, guard and pommel were belt sanded).  I used an old castle nut I found under my car (need to figure where that came from) as the pommel, and use brass for the guard and whatever that's called before the pommel.  3/16" brass pins, and polypearl handle material.  Shaped the handle with 160 grit on the belt sander - then slathered it with Turtle Wax polishing compound and went at it with 2000 grit.  It's ugly.  But, it's a death slayer for tomatoes. 

Having built the forge from scratch, and using terrible tools and zero idea what I'm doing - this could have come out a lot worse than it did.  

 

[Daswulf]

4 minutes ago, JeremyMcG said:

its mostly because I wanted to see if I could.

Ok. Just wondered since I've heard many misconceptions people have one being that forgewelded layered steel being better. Really no point welding it together if you don't need to. Just extra steps and more carbon lost to heating it. 

 

 

[Frosty]

Using a piece of steel on your bench for an anvil explains the hammer marks, it's WAY too high. However you pull it off you want the face of your anvil, whatever you use for an anvil, between wrist and knuckle height. Stand next to it in your work shoes, relaxed and judge it's height by where your wrist is off the floor. I just stand a yard stick against the wall and mark the height. That will make a HUGE difference.

Stick with us, we'll get you going.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Daswulf]

Got a 8 or 10# sledgehammer? You could even make a depression in a stump to use it and no need to even remove the handle. 

[Daswulf]

Fleamarkets are great for finding tools like sledgehammers and boxes of files and punches/chiseles for cheap among other things. 

Fleamarket season is almost up in my neck of the woods. Maybe it extends in the desert.

If you find yourself that hard up I could mail you a sledgehammer head fairly cheap. 

[zcr07]

On 8/16/2018 at 1:26 PM, Frosty said:

Use a proper hard refractory.

I know I've seen it elsewhere on here, but in the moment I can't seem to find it, but what would you recommend? Looking at Amazon for example, I assume I should steer clear of Rutlands. Is ITC-100HT what's been recommended before?
Also in the same vein, would any 8 lb 1" ceramic wool be sufficient, or any particular brand better than the others? I see Kaowool everywhere, is that what most use? I've heard stories of those purchasing certain cheaper options and the "1 inch thick" wool was packaged very tightly to the point of compression so it wasn't all that close to 1 inch thick.

[Frosty]

You might want to spend some time in the Forges 101 thread. I had to search to find a reference for Rutlands that applied to fire at all. So, yes stay away from it, they don't appear to make a furnace refractory product.

The current consensus forge refractory is KastOLite 30 li. it's a water setting, 3,000 f. high alumina bubble refractory. A member here, Wayne Coe sells and ships small amounts for reasonable so you don't have to buy a 50 lb. sack.

Lots of people swear by ITC 100 but it's more a legacy opinion, there are better products that cost FAR less. Matrikote being one. Some of us have messed with home brewed kiln washes that show real promise.

These things are laid out in more detail in the Forges 101 thread.

Frosty The Lucky.