A file in the ground, Recovered, then Knife.

ScottRoush

ScottRoush

Joined
Jan 10, 2010
Messages
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I got out of the habit of wanting to make knives from files and rasps a while ago, but a buddy of mine found this thing with a metal detector at an old farm site. Talk about gnarly.. the rust pits were almost 1/8" deep in places. You could barely make out the teeth. Heavy too... the spine is just over 1/4". So I made a knife and wanted as much of the character to show as possible so I just forged the tip and handle and did as little grinding of the profile as possible to preserve the spine. In retrospect I wish I would've put a little more curve in the handle area to fix it's broke back, but why look back?

It ended up having a hamon without using clay. This is due, I suppose, to the large difference in thickness between the edge and the rest of the blade and concentrating the critical temp just in the edge.. as well as the fact that is obviously a pretty shallow hardening steel.

Anyway... here it is...

10" OAL, redwood lace burl, birch bark spacers, padauk, etched wrought iron peened onto the full tang.

nerger.jpg


nerger2.jpg


nerger_detail.jpg


Not sure what happened to the processing on this one.. but it tells a better story than the others..

nerger_spine.jpg
 
Nice knife....and a story to follow
with it....I like the look...
 
Very nice Scott!I've always found it very enjoyable to take a long forgotten object and turn it into a beautiful and once again functional tool, and you've done a great job of doing just that here:thumbup::thumbup:!
 
Thank you everybody for taking the time to comment. Another fun knife to make. Yeah John.. It's especially nice when the object turns out to be good steel..
 
Amazing. I would love to have a knife with that much character. I'll have to try my hand at making a file knife one day.
 
Wow! You really nailed that! I love the rustic look of the "bark" combined with the refined look of the ground portions, hamon and handle. I imagine it was difficult to not disturb the old thick rust too much. :thumbup:

~Alden
 
That is an awesome looking knife. I have seen a few that still had hammer marks in it and other "imperfections" that I like, but this one is something else. Thanks for posting it.
 
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