- Joined
- Aug 4, 2004
- Messages
- 373
At the end of this week I'm going back to college, so I decided to finish up a couple of larger knives while I still had time.
Here's the first one.
14" long, 12 oz. I forged this one from a file and left the forged finish on the flat areas. You can also see some of the file marks, although I ground them almost all the way off with an angle grinder before forging to reduce the possibility of cracks or folds. The handle is a piece of cheap amboyna burl that I home "stabilized" with Nelsonite.
The quench line on this one is kind of interesting. There's a primary quench line which follows the curve of the blade to the tip, then another set of 4 parallel, wavy "ghost" lines running parallel to the edge. I think I made the ghost lines when I was wiggling the blade around in the quench tank to make waves.
In between there is a very subdued effect kind of like curly maple, with light and dark regions perpendicular to the edge. It was impossible to photograph.
In the picture it looks like the on
You can kind of see the "ghost" lines in this picture:
The lines used to be more distinct, but then I tried some home cold-treatment using dry ice and I swear that it changed things, kind of blurred the zones together. This kind of makes sense, because the transition zone did not cool quickly enough, so it had some retained austenite, which was then converted during the cold treatment.
It's kind of funny that the heat treatment turned out well because this was just an old file I found it my grandpa's basement. It wasn't even from a well-known company like Nicholson, the only marking on the file was a stamped "FMCO". I figured it was a cheap Chinese case-hardened file, but I guess not.
I also made a sheath.
This was the first one sheath that I truly "hand-stitched" using an awl instead of a drill press to punch holes. It was fun although I made some mistakes in the stitching. The awl made bigger holes than the drill press and it turned out that the marks from the overstitch wheel were too close together. So I had to guess the distance between stitches which made it look pretty uneven and bad.
On the plus side, when punching holes with the awl, you only punch one hole at a time, so the holes stay open and it's easier to push the needles through - didn't even need pliers. Then when you punch the next hole it pushes the leather over and closes up the previous hole. Pretty nice. Hey, and I didn't even break any needles. I think I'll stick with the awl from now on.
I chopped up a couple of small branches with this knife but it didn't work too well on anything big due to the light weight and balance. Also, after doing all that polishing and etching work, I felt bad messing up the finish! So for the next two knives I didn't even clean up the spatters of silver solder.
Both are forged from 5160, the first is 26" long and 29 oz, the second is 18" long and 18 oz. They both have a "plant matter finish" from a recent bit of chopping work.
On the big knife, I left the handle nice and long to allow for a comfortable two-hand grip. I really like that and I would like to get a khuk with an extra-long grip. Sometimes you need to be able to stop the knife after making a cut to avoid hitting a rock, steel fence post, or human leg, and having an extra hand there really helps.
You can also comfortably use this one handed, you can put your hand either farther back on the handle to get more power, or closer up to get more control. I made the handle such that the curved portion is on the back of the handle, so if you are holding it farther back the knife makes a larger angle with your hand, by grabbing closer up you hold it straighter.
With the second knife I made the handle a little too thin for my taste.
Okay, enough of the boring description. I got to use both of these today clearing out some brush along the fence line. Mostly, I had to cut through autumn olives, usually around 1" diameter branches, but going up to 3-5", a couple of large 4-5" diam poplar branches, some old dried up pine, and various small, about 1/4-1/2" diameter branches of differing composition.
I cut through everything within a couple of feet of the fence using the big knife. My dad got the smaller one, he would come up and drag the branches off, also cut up some of the smaller stuff towards the ground.
Both knives worked really well. I really like the extra-long handle design. It was comfortable to use and I didn't get any blisters on my right hand. My left hand got a couple but I think that's just because I don't normally do much work with that hand, so the skin is not toughened.
The long blade was nice for cutting the autumn olive, which tends to be a bit thorny in spots. I would choke up on the handle and use the tip of the knife to pick up the branches and throw them aside. This saved my hands from getting ripped up too.
One problem that I had with the longer, thinner blade (well, compared to the khukuris that I normally use) was it's tendency to glance when you don't make a cut properly. Especially when you make a cut with the tip, it goes flying off to one side.
The knife that I was using didn't suffer any edge damage, and I took a couple of swings into the dirt while cutting stuff close to the ground. My dad's knife took some damage in the form of the edge rolling. I was suprised because I thought I did a better job heat treating that one.
It could also just be that my dad wasn't as careful in not hitting rocks, or he made a couple of bad glancing blows. He was also using the tip to cut instead of the curved portion, which is not a good idea. I tested out the blade afterward and didn't get any damage from my use.
Well, I'm hoping that I still have some time to work on knives while I'm at school, although with my schedule it's doubtful. The co-op where I'm staying is supposed to have a workshop in the basement. Hopefully they have 220V service - then I could bring my belt grinder. The anvil and forge might be a bit of a stretch though.
Here's the first one.
14" long, 12 oz. I forged this one from a file and left the forged finish on the flat areas. You can also see some of the file marks, although I ground them almost all the way off with an angle grinder before forging to reduce the possibility of cracks or folds. The handle is a piece of cheap amboyna burl that I home "stabilized" with Nelsonite.
The quench line on this one is kind of interesting. There's a primary quench line which follows the curve of the blade to the tip, then another set of 4 parallel, wavy "ghost" lines running parallel to the edge. I think I made the ghost lines when I was wiggling the blade around in the quench tank to make waves.
In between there is a very subdued effect kind of like curly maple, with light and dark regions perpendicular to the edge. It was impossible to photograph.
In the picture it looks like the on
You can kind of see the "ghost" lines in this picture:
The lines used to be more distinct, but then I tried some home cold-treatment using dry ice and I swear that it changed things, kind of blurred the zones together. This kind of makes sense, because the transition zone did not cool quickly enough, so it had some retained austenite, which was then converted during the cold treatment.
It's kind of funny that the heat treatment turned out well because this was just an old file I found it my grandpa's basement. It wasn't even from a well-known company like Nicholson, the only marking on the file was a stamped "FMCO". I figured it was a cheap Chinese case-hardened file, but I guess not.
I also made a sheath.
This was the first one sheath that I truly "hand-stitched" using an awl instead of a drill press to punch holes. It was fun although I made some mistakes in the stitching. The awl made bigger holes than the drill press and it turned out that the marks from the overstitch wheel were too close together. So I had to guess the distance between stitches which made it look pretty uneven and bad.
On the plus side, when punching holes with the awl, you only punch one hole at a time, so the holes stay open and it's easier to push the needles through - didn't even need pliers. Then when you punch the next hole it pushes the leather over and closes up the previous hole. Pretty nice. Hey, and I didn't even break any needles. I think I'll stick with the awl from now on.
I chopped up a couple of small branches with this knife but it didn't work too well on anything big due to the light weight and balance. Also, after doing all that polishing and etching work, I felt bad messing up the finish! So for the next two knives I didn't even clean up the spatters of silver solder.
Both are forged from 5160, the first is 26" long and 29 oz, the second is 18" long and 18 oz. They both have a "plant matter finish" from a recent bit of chopping work.
On the big knife, I left the handle nice and long to allow for a comfortable two-hand grip. I really like that and I would like to get a khuk with an extra-long grip. Sometimes you need to be able to stop the knife after making a cut to avoid hitting a rock, steel fence post, or human leg, and having an extra hand there really helps.
You can also comfortably use this one handed, you can put your hand either farther back on the handle to get more power, or closer up to get more control. I made the handle such that the curved portion is on the back of the handle, so if you are holding it farther back the knife makes a larger angle with your hand, by grabbing closer up you hold it straighter.
With the second knife I made the handle a little too thin for my taste.
Okay, enough of the boring description. I got to use both of these today clearing out some brush along the fence line. Mostly, I had to cut through autumn olives, usually around 1" diameter branches, but going up to 3-5", a couple of large 4-5" diam poplar branches, some old dried up pine, and various small, about 1/4-1/2" diameter branches of differing composition.
I cut through everything within a couple of feet of the fence using the big knife. My dad got the smaller one, he would come up and drag the branches off, also cut up some of the smaller stuff towards the ground.
Both knives worked really well. I really like the extra-long handle design. It was comfortable to use and I didn't get any blisters on my right hand. My left hand got a couple but I think that's just because I don't normally do much work with that hand, so the skin is not toughened.
The long blade was nice for cutting the autumn olive, which tends to be a bit thorny in spots. I would choke up on the handle and use the tip of the knife to pick up the branches and throw them aside. This saved my hands from getting ripped up too.
One problem that I had with the longer, thinner blade (well, compared to the khukuris that I normally use) was it's tendency to glance when you don't make a cut properly. Especially when you make a cut with the tip, it goes flying off to one side.
The knife that I was using didn't suffer any edge damage, and I took a couple of swings into the dirt while cutting stuff close to the ground. My dad's knife took some damage in the form of the edge rolling. I was suprised because I thought I did a better job heat treating that one.
It could also just be that my dad wasn't as careful in not hitting rocks, or he made a couple of bad glancing blows. He was also using the tip to cut instead of the curved portion, which is not a good idea. I tested out the blade afterward and didn't get any damage from my use.
Well, I'm hoping that I still have some time to work on knives while I'm at school, although with my schedule it's doubtful. The co-op where I'm staying is supposed to have a workshop in the basement. Hopefully they have 220V service - then I could bring my belt grinder. The anvil and forge might be a bit of a stretch though.
(Applies especially to nihonto but it's valid here as well.)
