My first knife

[Potato-Demon]

First project I’ve ever done other than some fishhooks. Made this out of a high carbon (I know they aren’t actually high carbon but they’re better than just plain spikes) railroad spike. The edge is a bit uneven because I just sharpened it with my Dremel. Gonna fix the edge later tomorrow with my mill file. Heat treatment is done. I heated the blade to non-magnetic and dunked it in a can of cooking oil. I put it in the oven at around 400 Fahrenheit for an hour or so. It seems to cut well but it’s not exactly the best knife. I don’t have a belt sander and my angle grinder is screwed up so I can’t really clean up the knife too well. I kinda like how it looks now though. I’ve started on a tomahawk from another spike now and I expect to be done it in a couple days. Man are these things good for practicing.

[DuEulear]

Ok i am gonna try to give you a few pointers 

if you want to make a knife from a railroad spike it can be done just fine the hc ones are 1045-1060 i think it will hold an edge but not for long. Heat treating a knife while there is still major cleanup and stock removal to be done is counter productive especially  as you are using a file to do most of your stock removal. It will cut aneled    steel better than hardend. 

The main diffrence between a master knife maker with all the toys and a hobbyist with a 50$ shop is the speed with which you can produce a quality product . 

I forged and cut my first blade with a file just so i would know how . 

Your first knife looks as if you were rushing at every step. And preforming steps out of sequence and ommiting some entirely. 

Slow down, do some reading , take your time 

if your first knife takes 80 hrs to make a beautiful hunting blade that will last a lifetime and you had fun making it the whole time, then you are ahead of the game. 

If you want to make money at it then buy the toys so you can do the same quick. 

But slow down for now the fun is in the learning

 

susan

[ThomasPowers]

Can you give a cite on that; last official RR steel doc I read said they topped out at 30 points and it was the rail anchors that were 40-60 points.

P-D; I'd anneal it and draw file to almost to final shape and THEN harden it, in brine if not super quench.  Oil is for stuff that is high carbon and likely to shatter in water.  Makes the final work on it take less time and abrasives.

Of course you may be able to draw file it as it sits; remove the scale and try it!

[Steve Sells]

32 minutes ago, DuEulear said:

if you want to make a knife from a railroad spike it can be done just fine the hc ones are 1045-1060 i think it will hold an edge but not for long.

CORRECTION:  1060 is plenty for a hard edge, .60 is all that is needed for max hardness, any higher carbon content just adds carbides. but HC spikes are barely 1030 at best.  The production specs and test analysis have been posted here before

[DuEulear]

Thanks for the info on RR steel no i cant give doc on that one that is why i gave it a big i think. 

I was quoting someone from memory 

Sue

[ThomasPowers]

Well, I guess it also comes down to ones definition of "just fine".  A.G.Russell once bent an aluminum  beer can in two, flattened it and honed the bent edge till it would shave. Just wouldn't hold that edge long...Some of the high alloy knife steels are so hard you pretty much have to use a diamond hone to resharpen them in the field.  I prefer my knives to be a bit easier to sharpen; but to keep an edge much longer than the beer can blade...

[JHCC]

In 2005, AREMA (the American Railroad Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association) changed the standards for carbon content of railroad spikes, to accommodate greater stresses from heavier average loads. According to the 1968 standard, a regular "soft steel" spike would have a maximum of 0.12% carbon, and a "high carbon" spike would have a maximum of 0.30%. The new standard is for ALL spikes to have a carbon content between 0.17% and 0.25%.

[JHCC]

See https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/63932-new-standards-for-railroad-spikes/ for more details.

[Potato-Demon]

On 11/1/2019 at 10:19 AM, DuEulear said:

Ok i am gonna try to give you a few pointers 

I guess it was pretty rushed. I was only doing it to test out the forge and the whole process besides the heat treating only took about an hour and a half. Would a bolt used for joining pieces of track together have more carbon than a spike would?

[JHCC]

No, but you can use that domed shape for other purposes. I have a dishing hammer that I made from one of those, and it comes in very handy.

Newbies have a hard time coming to grips with this sometimes, but steel is really, really cheap. You can get excellent knifemaking steel for very little money, and not have to worry about trying to heat-treat unknown alloys. There's a list of suppliers elsewhere in the blademaking section. 

[DuEulear]

Np potato , 

just remember perfect practice makes perfect stuff lol 

my terrible work is no better .... 

Amen to that jhcc 

one 1/4x1x36 “ bar is at least 4 knives depending on size it might be ten 

pick an alloy of medium price, maybe 30$ 

 

Susan 

[Potato-Demon]

Would a couple of HUGE leaf springs be any good? I got them for free from an automotive place. Some rust but not too bad. I need to order some steel but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Good idea about the bolt.

[pnut]

Yes, and no. Leaf springs are made from hardenable steel but may have micro fractures from being used as springs that could cause it to break during heat treatment or when you're using it.  If you want to make a knife from them go ahead. They'll be harder to move than a spike  but even if there's micro fractures it will be better practice. If you want to make knives practice with something that will make a decent knife.  RR spikes don't move the same as high carbon steel, they don't have the same range of forging temp., and they don't burn up as easy.  I have a leaf spring I'm going to make a drawknife from. If you want to use salvaged steel and you have an old file you can use it and probably not have to worry about it having flaws in the structure before you start. 

To answer your question, yes you can use a leaf spring but be aware it might have cracks you can't see. As far as new steel Google , steel supplier near wherever you are. I have a steel supplier twenty minutes away from me that will sell small amounts of steel.  

If you want to practice making knifes use steel that will make a knife. Forging high carbon steel is different than forging low carbon or mild steel.   Good luck

Pnut

 

[JHCC]

Take a knife about the size you have in mind and put it next to a leaf spring. Look at the difference in thickness and width. That is all metal that you're going to have to cut off, forge out, or grind off.

If you want to use salvaged steel, think seriously about coil spring. You'll still have the microfracture issue, but the mass will be a lot closer to what you'll need: a 1/2" round bar can be hammered into a flat bar approximately 3/16" x 1".

Here's a chef's knife with a 10" blade and integral handle that I made from about 8" of 1/2" round stock:

[pnut]

When you get a little more skilled you can use leaf spring as the cutting edge in a RR spike knife. 

Pnut

[Potato-Demon]

By forge welding it on the edge?

I’ve been trying to find some coil springs but so far I only have leaf springs and a whole wheel barrow full of low-mid carbon steel scraps. That knife looks really nice, I especially like the handle.

[pnut]

Look up San Mai blade.

Pnut

[Frosty]

Salvaged coil spring tends to have much less stress fracturing as it's a much longer piece flexing a couple inches compared to leaf which is thicker stiffer and shorter flexing the same distance. 

Forging flat stock requires greater skills than does round stock.

P-D: My best advice to you is to learn basic blacksmithing to a proficient level THEN make blades. Right now you're trying to teach yourself the basic skills of the craft with steel that: REQUIRES greater temperature control, requires more force to move and has more failure modes. It's like learning to drive in a hot rod rather than the family commuter. 

Once you have the basics down when you start making blades you'll already know how to make the steel do plenty close to what you want so the only thing you'll need to learn is how one particular steel behaves under your hammer and in your fire. 

Practice making blades by stock removal, you'll have to develop good stock removal and finishing skills anyway to make finished blades and those skills are dissimilar to forging skills so you won't have to keep them straight to learn them properly.

I know you're young and it seems like forever but it's not, patience is it's own reward. The only regular thing rushing does for you is make your mistakes permanent sooner. Set yourself up for your best chance of success, you'll go farther. The thing regular failure does is make you want to do something else. 

Make sense?

Frosty The Lucky.

[CrazyGoatLady]

Well said Frosty. 

Potatoe, that's some of the best advice you'll ever get. 

[JHCC]

3 hours ago, Potato-Demon said:

I’ve been trying to find some coil springs

Make friends with a mechanic, especially one who does a lot of suspension work on passenger cars and pickup trucks. Give them a bottle opener made from a recognizable car part, and you will end up with more springs than you will ever need.

2 hours ago, CrazyGoatLady said:

Well said Frosty. 

Potatoe, that's some of the best advice you'll ever get. 

Agreed.

[ThomasPowers]

The best place I have found to get good spring stock cheap is places that do lifts and lowers on vehicles; they can get brand new cars/trucks in and JUNK their springs to install the lift/lower.  So you can get scrap priced springs with almost NO wear on them. (One place I got springs from did conversions of trucks into EMT vehicles, the springs had 16 miles of use on them---from the dealer ship to their shop).  Taking an *unplated* wrench and making a bottle opener from it as a gift to a local shop may overload you with spring material.

Of course sometimes you luck out. I recently picked up a coil spring at the scrapyard that still had the paper tag on it.

What I suggest to people starting out in forging knives is to get a coil spring and cut down a diameter making a dozen to a score of "(" shaped pieces all big enough to make a knife from and all the SAME ALLOY, this lets you lean the forging limits and heat treat requirements of that alloy and still have enough pieces to make decent blades from.