Brute de forge

[Ian Fifelski]

I am designing a small full tang brute de forged recurve hunter and it made me think of a few questions.

• Looking at a bunch of brute de forge knives, I notice many have a very pitted surface, much more that I have from forging. Is there something to use to get that very rough surface?

• How do you put scales on a full tang knife with brute de forged flats? Do you use a bunch of epoxy to fill the pits after making sure it is nearly flat (no curves/bends)?

• This is about general forging but when I bring my forge to forging/welding heat, I noticed the hard firebricks I have as the floor get molten and stick to the blade. When I brush the blade off it comes off hot but I am wondering if this could be a problem for any other reason?

Thanks

Ian

 

[lanternnate]

A lot of brute de forge is brute de faux. What I mean by that is there are plenty of folks that don’t actually forge the blade, they just whack it with a ball peen or cross peen hammer after they’ve cut it out to make it look forged. That can lead to some appearing much rougher than you might actually be getting from forging. I can’t say for sure that is the case for the examples you are talking about, but it could be the case. For scales you can mark where the scales will be and grind/sand that part of the handle, or another method I’ve seen and tried once was using epoxy impregnated felt as a liner to fill the gaps. It’s a bit fiddle trimming and cleaning up the excess felt at the front of the scales though.

 

[kuraki]

I don't forge full tang knives but when I do brute de forge hidden tang knives, I go from the forge to the grinder and back to the forge at least once. I find it's easier and faster to forge to rough dimensions, tune things a bit on the grinder, like the ricasso width and flatness, then finish forging the thing to final appearance.

If I was to do a thin tang, I would taper the tang so fit up was flat, without grinding into the exposed forged area.

 

[Josh Rider]

I did my first brute de forge recently so I’m not an expert, but I can share what I ran into.
Great questions by the way.

I forged my blade, but wanted it “crunchier”. I have a couple extra hammers that I wasn’t doing anything with so I turned them into texturing hammers. This can be done with carbide burrs, an angle grinder, drill bits, or whatever else to remove metal from the hammer face.
Then when your knife is profiled, wack it with the texture hammer.

As far as the tang, this was more complicated for me. I still wanted perfectly flat sides where the scales attach. I used a disc grinder for that and kept them flat just under where the scales are. I then used epoxy dye to darken it so if it wasn’t perfect around the front, it wouldn’t be obvious.

There are far more experienced forgers than me, I just figured I’d let you know my experience since it was recent.

 

[Ian Fifelski]

I did my first brute de forge recently so I’m not an expert, but I can share what I ran into.
Great questions by the way.

I forged my blade, but wanted it “crunchier”. I have a couple extra hammers that I wasn’t doing anything with so I turned them into texturing hammers. This can be done with carbide burrs, an angle grinder, drill bits, or whatever else to remove metal from the hammer face.
Then when your knife is profiled, wack it with the texture hammer.

As far as the tang, this was more complicated for me. I still wanted perfectly flat sides where the scales attach. I used a disc grinder for that and kept them flat just under where the scales are. I then used epoxy dye to darken it so if it wasn’t perfect around the front, it wouldn’t be obvious.

There are far more experienced forgers than me, I just figured I’d let you know my experience since it was recent.
View attachment 875962

Thanks, very good info. I was thinking that would be how it was done, with a 'sculpted' hammer I guess. I wonder if you could simply throw some fine gravel on the blade and give it a few wacks and brush it all off...

Thanks all.

 

[kuraki]

Heh, when I wanted a finely textured finish, that's not far off from what I did. I used piled up forge scale at low heat.

 

[jdm61]

I did one for the first time a few weeks ago. Here is a very out of focus picture. I just forged more carefully than usual and gave the blade shaped object a soak in white vinegar after forging. I then ground on a Nathan 36 inch curved platen. Dimensions will be like 5 1/4 to 5 3/8 long depending howling I make the ricasso, 1 1/4 wide and 1/4 thick at the ricasso. Oh, and it's CruForgeV, so not having to polish up the entire blade will be a welcome relief.

 

[lanternnate]

Thanks, very good info. I was thinking that would be how it was done, with a 'sculpted' hammer I guess. I wonder if you could simply throw some fine gravel on the blade and give it a few wacks and brush it all off...

Thanks all.

I wouldn’t want gravel on my anvil or against my hammer face. If you want slightly rougher without going over the top just don’t brush the forge scale off as much. You can then either keep the scale if that’s the look you want or do an overnight vinegar bath. That will eat off the scale leaving behind the subtle pitting from the scale that was hammering into the steel. This is the result of that approach:

That was vinegar bathed after heat treat so it takes a gray tone. You can do the vinegar before heat treat and leave more of the “forge finish” from the heat treat if you want more of the black.

I personally don’t like the really aggressive “brute de forge” that has been obviously textured. To me, brute de forge is about showing it was a forged blade. I don’t want it to look like it was forged poorly though. I also think the forced texturing looks, well, forced, which makes me think faked. Really rough is basically the opposite of what you want in a well forged blade. Personally, one of my next wants is a flatter to make my flats even cleaner off the anvil if I want to do brute de forge.

 

[kuraki]

I think a flatter would be ideal for this. I was thinking about just welding one together to try using a cheap ball peen and welding a square chunk of stock to the face.

 

[jdm61]

I turned my flatter into a pseudo-Japanese hammer. Works better that way.

 

[lanternnate]

I think a flatter would be ideal for this. I was thinking about just welding one together to try using a cheap ball peen and welding a square chunk of stock to the face.

I’ve seen (and considered doing for myself) the steel plate welded to a hammer, but you want a hammer with two flat faces not a ball peen. A flatter is a top tool, not a hammer. You set it on top of the piece you are working then strike the back of it with your hammer.

 

[Justin Schmidt]

Ive wondered if a waffle face hammer would benefit this. Josh that hamon is BEAUTIFUL

kuraki harbeer has posted pics of his flattening hammers that are just thick steel welded to hammers. @HSC ///

 

[JTknives]

I normally don’t leave gorge finishes but I have a customer order for one I’m currently working on. I try and forge it to as close to finish as possible, to the point where it would just needs sharpening. Here is the current one I’m working on. Forged from 5160 and I neglected brushing that scale to the best of my ability lol. My thought is if your leaving a forged look then the blade should be forged, but that’s for another discussion.

I even forge the clip

Also forge the bevels down to just about finished thickness.

I then soak it for 24hrs in vinager in a container on top of the dryer. The wife does a few loads of laundry and it seams to help loosen stuff up after it’s bern soaking and it vibrates. This is after like 5hrs.

And after 24hrs

I then wire brush it and check for any stuck scale. My fealing is that scale has no place in a finished blade. It can come off while using it or trap moisture under it.

Then grind the edge bevels

That’s as far as I have gotten as he tossed another order in front of this that he needed ASAP. I just finished that blade so I’m back on this one.

 

[Ian Fifelski]

I normally don’t leave gorge finishes but I have a customer order for one I’m currently working on. I try and forge it to as close to finish as possible, to the point where it would just needs sharpening. Here is the current one I’m working on. Forged from 5160 and I neglected brushing that scale to the best of my ability lol. My thought is if your leaving a forged look then the blade should be forged, but that’s for another discussion.

I even forge the clip

Also forge the bevels down to just about finished thickness.

I then soak it for 24hrs in vinager in a container on top of the dryer. The wife does a few loads of laundry and it seams to help loosen stuff up after it’s bern soaking and it vibrates. This is after like 5hrs.

And after 24hrs

I then wire brush it and check for any stuck scale. My fealing is that scale has no place in a finished blade. It can come off while using it or trap moisture under it.

Then grind the edge bevels

That’s as far as I have gotten as he tossed another order in front of this that he needed ASAP. I just finished that blade so I’m back on this one.

Your forging is really nice! Thanks for the tips. I was thinking to remove the scale, rather than soaking, I would go over it thoroughly with a firm wire brush cup. That would work, right?

 

[JTknives]

Scale is really really hard and is just about welded (not actualy) to the steel. A wire brush will remove some but not anything in the holes. Plus you will be messing with the surface finish of the soft steel underneath if you use a brush cup like a knotted brush. Trust me $3 of vinager is much more efficient then any power tool you can use on a blade. Brushing hot with a block brush will remove a lot of scale and will smooth the finish. The Brissles on block brushes are thin flat wires so it scrapes the steel.

 

[Horsewright]

I have an old head stone that they screwed up the lettering on. The back side was never smoothed up like the front side. I haven't done a brut de forge in years but I use to use this head stone instead of the anvil when I was doing them. Worked pretty good. I would use the flat disc to get the tang flat.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

When I want extreme Brute-de-Forge, I use a polished ball peen hammer. Use it on the hot steel with all the scale brushed away ( and a clean anvil face). It will leave smooth dents. Work the pattern evenly in multiple passes. Start with softer blows and increase as needed over sevearl heats.

I also have some texturing hammers, which have a rough pattern cut in the face and thus leave that imprint when the upper bevel is worked. These are often used on Japanese kiri-ha blades.

 

[joedhiggins]

+1 on Stacy's advice. Texturing hammers work well.

Alternatively, and I kind of like this look too, let the scale build on the part of the blade you want to have this finish on, texture via any method. After forging, give the blade a bath in HCL and let it eat away all the scale. It leaves a gnarly cool look to the steel. You can then either let the spine scale up in heat treatment and leave it that way or dunk it in the HCL again to clean any scale from HT.

If I do reclean the scale, I like to apply a surface treatment afterwards. Hot bluing looks cool, and I find that cold blue/blacks are very durable on this sort of pitted surface. Because this method leaves a verry rough surface finish, I like to use it with grinds that go pretty high up the blade. Because on most knives I prefer something closer to a flat grind as opposed to a short saber or scandi, I often forge the bevel at a slightly lower angle than I want for the primary bevel and grind up to it, leaving a bit of as forged near the spine while still tapering from spine to edge.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

I am in agreement with Joe. A medium to high grind - like a yanagi ba or usuba - will look very good with then upper bevel rough and dark. On san-mai with soft iron cladding, it is even better.

 

[jdm61]

I am a bit hesitant to leave any spot on a kitchen knife with a finish any rougher than say 400 grit.