Don't laugh! Forge fun pics!

G

Guy Thomas

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Feb 1, 2000
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Well I got a chance to try and forge a khukuri today! This was really an experiment as I haven't forged long blades yet and I didn't have stock thick or wide enough for a proper khukuri blade. I only have 1/4"x1" 5160 stock, so I tried for a sirupati style narrow blade! Here are the pictures:
:D

Before:

View


After:

View


I lost a little curve in the blade during the later phases of the forging process and I had some trouble with the tang. My respect for the kamis only grows! I think I have much to learn! (Of course, a couple of guys swinging sledges would have helped immensely, man my arm and shoulder are sore, I haven't forged in three weeks!):D

Guy Thomas
 
For a first attempt it doesn't look too bad. For a first attempt ;), just teasing.
Matthew
 
Guy, here's the way to do it.
 

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I told Guy he should put our two kids to work helping him. Wait a minute....our kids....big hammers...maybe not. :eek:
 
And considering the size of some truck springs Guy should be thankful he didn't have one to start forgeing on.;)
That would have meant really sore.:D
 
Guy, that's really interesting stuff! :D I'd love to start trying to forge blades myself, but I already have more hobbies than time, and more time than money. It looks in the pictures (to me at least) like the metal is copper or brass. You said it was 5160, so is it coted in something? Does it look different before being forged and polished? Or am I simply seing the pictures wrong.

Well, anyway, most of the kamis have thirty or fourty tears experience to work from making khukuris alone. Taking that into consideration it really isn't a bad first effort! ;)
 
Well, it's not the first knife I've forged but it is the first khukuri and it is a whole new beast to forge.

Matt, yes it is steel, the odd color must just be my poor lighting for picture taking. It is however still dark from being soaked in vinegar to remove the forge scale. It needs to go back in for the rest of the night to remove the last of it. Then I will start in on it with files.

Yvsa, I may need to resort to truck springs in order to get the proper size and thickness for the blades. Uncle Bill, can those guy's AND their hammers make it over to my place!:D I'll feed 'em real good!. Matthew, I know you were just teasing, I was pretty amused by this escapade myself!

My little portable propane forge that I built really isn't suited to forging khukris so I am in the process of building a small charcoal burning forge that will handle up to 18" blades with no problem. The charcoal will be much kinder to the steel also.

I'll work on this one a bit more, I may forge on it a bit to adjust its curve some, and it will look much better once I have cleaned it up with files and tweaked the profile. It was essentially practice
but it might actually turn out.

Guy Thomas
 
And when it's finished it will definitely be one of a kind!!!!:cool:
And it's really interesting to leave the hammer dingy finish over most of the blade, saves a lot of work and really appeals to me as it shows it's truly a hammer forged piece.
The one I finished that Uncle Bill likes so much has that finish on the blade as well as a blued finish. A good friend furnished the handle material through Uncle Bill and it's African Knobthorn. A very beautiful dark wood that was the absolute nastiest wood I've ever had the pleasure to work with. It's a very oily wood and the sanding dust gets in the grooves of your finger and hand prints and just about has to wear off. Even Fast Orange wouldn't remove it easily!!!!

I think the kamis must make the truck springs wider, actually thicker, by forgeing and then pehaps forge weld another piece of steel on to get the width.
I would love to watch them at work for about a year or five.;)
Good way to learn to swear in Nepali.;)
Funny how that's the first thing many people learn when trying to learn a language from the locals.:)

What are you planning on using for a handle? And the furniture? I used copper furniture on mine and with the very dark wood it is absolutely beautiful.
It would be nice to have the kamis do a YCS with copper furniture instead of the silver or perhaps a combo of both.
And then a beautiful piece of very burly rosewood would set it off handsomely with the horn and bone inlay!!!!:D:D:D:D
 
Yvsa, I'd like to see a picture of that khukri you finished. Did you get a HI blade only so you could make the handle and furniture? The copper sounds interesting as does the Knobthorn (which I've never heard of), and that would be one beautiful YCS the way you described. I'd love more than a few learning sessions with the kamis myself (forging that is, but some new swear words wouldn't hurt either! :D ) (I like that big grin by the way.)

After I start draw filing the flats some we'll see if the hammer marks are attractive or not. I sometimes leave them on the upper portions of the blade I'm making. There is a movement known as the Neo-Tribal school of knifemaking that utilizes the hammer finish extensively. I'm thinking of using steel for the furniture as I have quite a bit of plate of the right gauge and I have a small board of cocobolo that I think is thick enough for the handle. Its very dark and has lots of little eyes in it. I may save that for better khukris I forge and just use oak or walnut on this seeing as it's a learning experience. I've been itching to shape one of these handles out of wood though!

In lieu of lahi I'll have to use cutler's resin, the recipe I'm going to try is pine pitch, beeswax and ground herbivore dung (since there aren't any moose or buffalo around here it will have to be pellets from the family pet, our rabbit Basil!):D

Guy Thomas
 
And my advice would be to use some 2 ton 30 minute epoxy for glueing the handle in place.
IIRC the laha goes through a cooking process and then is boiled to make it runny enough to pour into the handle cavity. Not a process that we're familiar enough with without some major expermentation to make it where it dries solid. I have had very good luck with the epoxy.
I'm familiar with the Neo-Tribal guys and absolutely Love their work!!!!
They make some of the prettiest and most usable knives going today IMO.:)

A tip on making the handle is to leave a handle on the handle so to speak. You can make it on either end, but I prefer the butt cap end as it's larger and can be shaped and pretty much sized before you're ready to cut it off. And it lets you fit the bolster end into the bolster accurately with a good fit. You want it just loose enough so as to get some epoxy around it and that gives you a little play for alignment.:)
I didn't use a bolster on the as forged blade, just a flat pice of copper made to fit closely to the blade. The only thing I regret is not making the handle just a bit larger. It fits my hand okay, but just a bit larger would have permitted me to make more of a chainpuri style which I really like.
And it's very easy to get the handle smaller than one would like so you might want to start with a larger piece of wood than you think you need.
That's what I will do when I get around to finishing my as forged Hanuman blade. I broke the tang off getting heavy handed with a large hammer trying to get more curve on it and it's at a friends place now waiting to get welded up. The next time I will heat one before pounding on it like that.
The chainpuri tang bent alright though so I wasn't expecting it to do what it did.:(
But it's a much larger and heavier tang so should have thought ahead.
 
Guy, I'd say you're doing alright for a first kuk. Specially considering the size stock you started with. I'd agree with Yvsa about using the epoxy for the handle I've used it on several knives, works great. Bill Moran told me that on a knife he had made and epoxied a antler handle on the owner wanted a different material. So Bill thought he could he could break the handle loose. He said "I hammered and beat on it, tried to smash it, I couldn't get it off. Ended up having to grind it off". Another suggestion for defining the tang is make a simple spring fuller out of 3/4" mild steel square stock, leave 2-3" square draw out 8-10" to form the spring, 2-3" for the other end bend it in half leaving an 1" or so of space and weld a piece of square stock perpendicular to one end to fit in your hardy hole and you are good to go. saves a lot of fileing.Here's a quick sketch.
 

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I should post a pic of the BAS blade I have been "working on." I am trying to file a nice curve in it. I didn't realize how much effort it would take just to take off that quarter inch of steel. It's a work in progress. If anything it would make somebody chuckle.
Matthew
 
Matthew don't know if there's any horse places around your neck of the woods, but if there isn't you could probably find one online, One what you say?;)
The Animal Health Supply, a pet and other products store has everything from the low grade dog food to no telling what.
They also have a few anvils in stock as well as the blacksmith tongs and such that goes with them.
Along with that they have some of the dayumedest files you have ever seen.
These files remove steel at a remarkable rate and are real handy when trying to remove that much material. The files are much larger than the standard files and are very coarse cut. And they're not priced out of range either.
I bought one of their finest cut files or rasps which I suppose in fact they are and it makes short work of almost anything.
You might wanna give 'em a try if you can.:)
 
Yvsa, thanks. I will have to give that a shot. For the most part I have most of the steel off that I want off, now it is just a matter of sanding :barf: . I am looking forward to it greatly. The fun part should be finding some nice handle material. I will keep you guys updated, *if* I make any progress.
Matthew
 
"let it be what it wants to be"
that is the best advice I've ever received about knife making.

some times we try too hard to make a knife come out exactly like we want it, every blade should be an original and a lot of the time they will design theirselves, especially with hand forged blades.

just my thought.
 
Gonna try to bring the pix over here. I have one in a place that I don't know how it got there. Oh well it's sorta an interesting place with even more goodies to play with. This thing still has programs I ain't discovered, no telling how long that will go on.;)

I did something wrong I guess. I had the blade only pic up here at 1st and then tried to put this one underneath. I will try another post and see if it works, something else new to learn.:rolleyes:;)
 
Should be as forged Chainpuri and Hanuman blades if it will let me do it.

Well it did.:) I apologize for the poor quality of pic. I tried to manipulate it to where it was better and finally got tired of messing with it.
 
I'm hoping this will be a bit better pic of the finished khukuri.

It's a tad better, lets y'all see the hammer dingy finish. Kumar had this blade at 95% and I took some artistic license with it and made it into the full curving khukuri you see. The blade was blued with Brownell's Cold Blue after the blade was thoroughly cleaned and warmed up with very hot water. The blade took the blue rather nicely don't y'all think?:D
 
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