First Forged Knife, Mini-Kukri (WIP) - updated 10/9

Pete84

Pete84

Joined
Apr 14, 2011
Messages
168
Ok guys, this thread has a few different "firsts" -- first WIP, first forged blade, and first recurve design. This is by no means intended as a tutorial... more to chronicle my process and see if anyone notices anything I'm doing wrong.

I wanted to challenge myself on this one, so I decided to make a small kukri. I've never ground a recurve, so that should be a challenge in and of itself. As it sits right now, it's about 13" overall, with around 8" of sharpenable blade surface (when I'm done). I'm planning to do a flat grind about 1/3 of the way up the blade from the edge. I'm thinking I will leave the rest "forge finished," as I'm intending this knife for some serious abuse to test my HT. I started off with some of Aldo's best 1084 in 3/16x1.5.

After drawing it out a bit and shaping it, here's where I left off when I went to work last night. I outlined the profile I'm going for in black. Definitely not forged to the exact shape I'd like, but I'm getting close. I think I have about an hour or so into this piece right now.

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I kept it largely straight, which I'm pleased about. I forged in a very slight distal taper ranging from a little over 1/8" at the ricasso to just over 1/16" at the tip. I'd be more exact, but I can't seem to find my calipers right now. I'll update with more specifics when I locate them. The tang has an obvious bend in it, which is intentional (helps me hold onto it better when hammering).

There are a couple of trouble spots which are bothering me, and I'm not quite sure how to go about fixing them. The first is the tip -- pretty obvious rookie move. I tried to follow the method I've seen others use for getting the tip to shape up properly, but wasn't terribly successful. I'm wondering if this is something I can clean up by forging, or if I'll need to break out the cutoff wheel and chop it to shape. I'm just concerned about thinning down the tip anymore in the process, as it's already on the borderline of being too thin for this sort of knife.

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The second pressing issue is this... while I was shaping the recurve over the horn, somehow I managed to fold a small piece of steel over onto itself. The picture will explain better than I can. Again, trying to figure out if I can fix this by forging or if I should just grind it out when cleaning up the profile.

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I'll update with more pics as progress allows. What do you think so far? Changes? Technical tips? Good, bad, ugly? I'm all ears. :)
 
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looks good for your first forged blade. Many smiths get folds in their blades, so it is good to keep a vise and angle grinder nearby to grind the folds out as you forge. Don't worry about the tip, it can be ground out as you profile the blade.
 
Ok... a little update. I went to my blacksmithing/forging mentor after my class today and he pretty much confirmed that I should just begin grinding, as the problem areas I pointed out in the previuos post would be nearly impossible to fix by forging with my stock having been drawn out as thinly as it is. So, I ground it to shape.

I wound up going higher up on the handle after I took the picture.

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I also lightly ground the bevels, which were mostly forged in already. Not even grinding, I know, but this is going to end up being destruction tested. I want to see if this shape works out and if my backyard HT is doing its job before I give away any knives to friends, etc.

And that's about where the problems started. After cleaning off the scale, I went to drill my holes in the tang and that went precisely nowhere. Steel somehow hardened despite not having been quenched. I had done several normalizing cycles when I finished forging, but apparently I forgot to re-anneal it. So, I ran another set of normalizing sequences and then annealed it as best I can with present equipment. This is just reinforcing in my mind the need for a temp controlled HT oven, but I digress.

I decided to do a paracord wrap, rather than waste wood on the handle of something I'm intending to break. I did some drawfiling to help descale and refine the bevels a little more, then did my HT. Heated to non-magnetic, held about 20-30 seconds past that, then quenched in canola @ 135 degrees. It warped right at the ricasso transition.

At the moment, I'm using the trick Rick posted for straightening during temper using shims, a flat bar, and clamps. I'll report back when I'm done. I finished the first cycle and it seems to be helping, but I adjusted the shims and clamps for the second cycle to see if I can get it exactly straight. If not, I'll do one more cycle when I get home from work. I'm doing 2 hour cycles @ 425F. Assuming that this goes according to plan, more or less, I'll be trying my hand at a soft-back draw.

I'll report back as to whether this blade is wrecked, or if I'm moving forward to testing.
 
Here's where I left off after the first cycle tonight... I quenched it in water after the temper the way Rick suggested. It seems like that helped. The warped area is significantly straighter than it was from the initial quench. It still needs another cycle or two and I have to adjust my shims a bit to fully straighten.

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As you can see, the main issue is about 2/3 of the way to the tip. I'll update with progress tomorrow.

Sorry about the large pictures... for whatever reason, the BF uploader keeps telling me my upload failed so I'm using Photobucket instead.
 
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