First knife....shaped metal...thing!

[Midwinter]

Finally finished one free of forge slop and cold shuts!
Been forging over a year now but never heat treated one. I am extremely grateful to the forge I trained at but I I was only permitted a coal forge, outside, with no shade and no heat measurement tools to speak of so it seemed like a waste of time to attempt even normalizing by sight alone in those conditions.
Blade started out as a kitchen knife but I dropped it into the fire while dodging bullets and lost the entire tang.
Recently I had a talk with the law (wife) and acquired the tools for a small operation including a small gas forge.

Aldo's W2 circa last summer
Shape was freehanded
Triple normalized to non-magnetic and a far bit of change with stepped decrements at each cycle.
Quenched in mineral oil.
Brass pin, red spacers, cocobolo handle.
Obvious sins a chump with a cheap belt grinder on the handle but not as noticeable in person.
Forced patina covers up some sharpening slop but I have vowed to use this knife every day so over the course of a few sharpenings it will have a Mirror polish on the cutting edge and I will abandon the forced patina.
About 1.75mm (guess) @ the ricasso..

I know the handle seems small but it is very comfortable and should be up to handling up to fairly moderate tasks.
Comments and criticisms more than welcome!

 

[Overmountain]

Looks like a nice first. A bit thin for my taste but to each his own. With the finger choil I would think the grip is adequate and even pretty ergo-correct.
I would ditch the forced patina on the edge for either a whole blade treatment, blueing, or just a nice uniform brushed look. Cocabolo is a good long lasting wood and makes a nice handle material.
I personally don't use the grinder for my handles. I prefer a rotary tool and files. Grinders take off a lot of material quickly especially if it is a soft material. It will also melt micarta and the resins in some stabilized wood if not very carefully used.
Nice job, now go make some more!!!
Cheers.

 

[Midwinter]

Heard on the aggressiveness of the belt grinder.
Also do you think the blade being thin will have any negative effects? I have not used an outdoorsy style knife in a long time. As I said, this was originally a kitchen knife but this is the general thickness I'm aiming for for knives of this size and even a little larger as I figured it would prevent wedging.
...am I totally going about this the wrong way?

Nice job, now go make some more!!!
Cheers.

YESSIR!

 

[Bo T]

Looks fine to me. You won't know how well it works until you use it for a while. I forged and heat treated my first blade a couple of weeks ago using a coal forge. I think your knife is going to come out better than mine. Don't worry about the blade being thin. Just don't do anything that will put undue lateral stress on it.

 

[Overmountain]

Being thin doesn't have any necessarily bad traits, but batoning it through some wood might be a bad idea. The trick is all in the HT. I 'prefer' a thinner blade personally, but usually suggest a thicker blade especially for my customers. If the HT is too brittle they will snap like a toothpick. Of course I have a camp knife that I did as a cooking/campsite chores knife a bit ago that is 1/16" thick. I differentially hardened it and it holds a great edge and is still flexible enough for finesse cutting.

I agree with the above that you won't know till you use it a bunch. It looks great, and there is plenty of width to the blade so I would figure it to be quite strong.

Of course the 'go make more' is purely encouragement. I love this site because there are eager people with an obvious passion and artistic talent posting up their first attempts every day. I wish I had ventured onto the web with my knifemaking sooner. I would have had a much quicker learning curve with the resources here.

Cheers!

 

[Overmountain]

I meant to add... I have a 100+ year old MSA #66 skinner (which is supposedly the last known remaining example) that was carried daily by my great uncle for most of his life. He left it to me when he passed, and it is now the pride of my collection... That knife is about 1/16" thick, so thin by my standards, and has a nice convex grind. At that thickness though I can remember my great uncle doing almost everything you can imagine with that knife from slicing an apple to batoning through kindling. I have seen it skin a deer and even pry a few things loose from time to time.

So, in short, I think that thickness will be just fine. It is only with modern knives that we seem to think we need 1/4" thick blades for everything. The same goes with leather for sheaths. We concern ourselves with durability and use 10oz leather, but the sheath for that old MSA is probably 3oz at best and is still in one piece...