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- Aug 23, 2002
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In my earlier post http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=309407 I alluded to the fact that a second knife was due for this set and that the steel they were made from was something different - well here is the second knife and an explanation of what we're up to.......
This second knife is the skinner and has an elk antler grip with pewter bolster and butt cap and brass tack decoration. The sheath is in the works.
"A blacksmith named Newton, at LaPointe Wisconsin in 1836 complained that it was impossible to warrant the half axes and tomahawks because of the blister steel being so bad."
The above quote set my mind to thinking.....Hmmmm....(it was late at night after a loooong day!) A frontier smith, a 1,000 miles or more from his nearest supplier, gets a load of crappy blister steel. What to do? It would take months to get a new load and in the meantime....Now he knows that blister steel was made into shear steel, a more refined/amalgamated product, by hammering and folding and hammering and folding some more. Of course the commercial shear steel product is made using massive tilt hammers and all the frontier smith has is his right arm and a 10 pound sledge (well maybe a helper too). Soooo.....
Original blister steel was made by "cooking" wrought iron rods in a sealed bath of charcoal. The iron rods absorbed carbon from the charcoal and blister steel was created. The problem with the blister steel process was quality of the end product - the rods depending on where they lay in the stack, etc. didn't absorb carbon equally so when finished the rods varied in quantity and quality of carbon.
My original train of thought was what "modern" product would come closest to imitating original blister steel, since currently real blister steel is a rare commodity. According to various researchers of 18th/19th Century steels, the modern 10xx series of plain carbon steels most closely matches the 18th and 19th century product and since it comes in varying carbon contents form .05 to .95 the old wheels started spinning faster. Hmmmm what if.....?
So I got on the phone with collaborator Gib Guignard. He had some 1084 and 1095 on hand, perhaps not the best mix to imitate the original, but we decided it was start and to give it a shot. These two blades ( a third, much larger one, is in the wings waiting for a handle) are the result of our first experiment based on idea and Gib's good right arm and his skill wielding a hand held hammer. Other than the fact he used a propane forge, he made it just like a frontier smith would have, with the hand tools he had available - thus our name for this simple, pattern welded steel made ala a smith of the old west - is Frontier Shear Steel. Since we are already making frontier style knives and hawks our idea is to produce a shear type steel comparable to that of what a frontier smith could have made using the limited resources at his disposal: only hand tools, time would also have been a factor - he wouldn't have had the luxury to experiment a great deal, and he therefore would most likely have kept his layer count fairly low - (these blades are 32 layers IIRC - Gib will hopefully chime in and answer that part - in the future we plan to increase that to 48 or perhaps 64).
Our Frontier Shear Steel is still in the early stages of development. Other options for our Neo-Frontier Shear Steel version is to use a higher layer count to start with, these blades started out as 4 layers - 2 of 1084 and 2 of 1095, and also to vary the steel/carbon content to more closely imitate the varied carbon content of the original blister steel by throwing some 1040/1050 and 1065/1070 or whatever into the mix.
On the other hand OUR next step, a step backwards
, with the help of fellow collaborator and bladesmith Mark Williams, is to make our own blister steel, and then use that to make our Frontier Shear Steel.
FYI - the name Frontier Shear Steel is to differentiate our shear steel from the 18th/19th century commercially made shear steel, which as stated above was produced with the aid of water powered tilt hammers and had a fairly high layer count, much higher than a frontier smith would most likely have gone to. It also differentiates our steel from the Frontier Damascus made by other blademakers who use various scraps to form that particular product - Frontier Shear Steel will be made only from full sized skelps as would have been available to a frontier smith and only from either 10xx series "modern steel" or from our own soon to be produced blister steel.
This second knife is the skinner and has an elk antler grip with pewter bolster and butt cap and brass tack decoration. The sheath is in the works.
"A blacksmith named Newton, at LaPointe Wisconsin in 1836 complained that it was impossible to warrant the half axes and tomahawks because of the blister steel being so bad."
The above quote set my mind to thinking.....Hmmmm....(it was late at night after a loooong day!) A frontier smith, a 1,000 miles or more from his nearest supplier, gets a load of crappy blister steel. What to do? It would take months to get a new load and in the meantime....Now he knows that blister steel was made into shear steel, a more refined/amalgamated product, by hammering and folding and hammering and folding some more. Of course the commercial shear steel product is made using massive tilt hammers and all the frontier smith has is his right arm and a 10 pound sledge (well maybe a helper too). Soooo.....
Original blister steel was made by "cooking" wrought iron rods in a sealed bath of charcoal. The iron rods absorbed carbon from the charcoal and blister steel was created. The problem with the blister steel process was quality of the end product - the rods depending on where they lay in the stack, etc. didn't absorb carbon equally so when finished the rods varied in quantity and quality of carbon.
My original train of thought was what "modern" product would come closest to imitating original blister steel, since currently real blister steel is a rare commodity. According to various researchers of 18th/19th Century steels, the modern 10xx series of plain carbon steels most closely matches the 18th and 19th century product and since it comes in varying carbon contents form .05 to .95 the old wheels started spinning faster. Hmmmm what if.....?
So I got on the phone with collaborator Gib Guignard. He had some 1084 and 1095 on hand, perhaps not the best mix to imitate the original, but we decided it was start and to give it a shot. These two blades ( a third, much larger one, is in the wings waiting for a handle) are the result of our first experiment based on idea and Gib's good right arm and his skill wielding a hand held hammer. Other than the fact he used a propane forge, he made it just like a frontier smith would have, with the hand tools he had available - thus our name for this simple, pattern welded steel made ala a smith of the old west - is Frontier Shear Steel. Since we are already making frontier style knives and hawks our idea is to produce a shear type steel comparable to that of what a frontier smith could have made using the limited resources at his disposal: only hand tools, time would also have been a factor - he wouldn't have had the luxury to experiment a great deal, and he therefore would most likely have kept his layer count fairly low - (these blades are 32 layers IIRC - Gib will hopefully chime in and answer that part - in the future we plan to increase that to 48 or perhaps 64).
Our Frontier Shear Steel is still in the early stages of development. Other options for our Neo-Frontier Shear Steel version is to use a higher layer count to start with, these blades started out as 4 layers - 2 of 1084 and 2 of 1095, and also to vary the steel/carbon content to more closely imitate the varied carbon content of the original blister steel by throwing some 1040/1050 and 1065/1070 or whatever into the mix.
On the other hand OUR next step, a step backwards
, with the help of fellow collaborator and bladesmith Mark Williams, is to make our own blister steel, and then use that to make our Frontier Shear Steel. FYI - the name Frontier Shear Steel is to differentiate our shear steel from the 18th/19th century commercially made shear steel, which as stated above was produced with the aid of water powered tilt hammers and had a fairly high layer count, much higher than a frontier smith would most likely have gone to. It also differentiates our steel from the Frontier Damascus made by other blademakers who use various scraps to form that particular product - Frontier Shear Steel will be made only from full sized skelps as would have been available to a frontier smith and only from either 10xx series "modern steel" or from our own soon to be produced blister steel.
