First knife!

[rock3r4life]

Hello bladeforums! the site has helped me out quite a bit with my little project, so I decided to join in the fun. This is my first knife, I forged it out of D2 steel, tempered to 60-62ish, made the habaki out of brass and the saya out of pine.

Hopefully more to come soon! I want to continue experimenting with d2, because I have a lot and it seems like a great steel (NOT TO WORK WITH) but I may hop to 1085/1095 for ease and hamon. Plus it seems like all the fuss is in Damascus...

 

[bobasaurus]

Excellent job. That looks like a lot of effort to forge. I like the forge marks left on the spine. Why do your pins not go through the tang?

 

[rock3r4life]

well thank you very much!

I tried drilling a hole (after annealing as best I could) and that just ended in exploding bits... I dried drifting a hole which ended in broken drift that lodged itself into the originally longer tang. At this point it was rough ground, shaped nicely, habaki made, and I wasn't willing to give up on the blade since I spent so much time on it. so I hot cut the end off and ground two notches into the sides. I kind of like the two mekugi look though. and id say its just as sturdy as traditional style.

 

[bobasaurus]

You need some better quality bits (made for cutting steel), and run them at low speed with some cutting fluid. That should help out with the drilling process. You might also want to start with a smaller hole then work your way larger. The final knife still looks good, regardless.

 

[Alizey]

Nice job! I like your knife that you made yourself. I gave 80 marks to your effort. There is not some cleanness in your knife. Continue your try. Hope you will make a best knife.

 

[Frank Niro]

This looks very good to me and being a first, a forged, and what I think is a difficult design to make I believe doing more will possibly make you a very fine maker !! Frank

 

[rock3r4life]

You need some better quality bits (made for cutting steel), and run them at low speed with some cutting fluid.

agreed, but carbide bits are expensive and im a broke-*** college student. so I made I new and nicer drift out of some free coil spring, and finished the tang on a d2 katana I'm working on. Mekugi holes went in smoothly no problems.

im new to forging and theres a lot of problems I encountered from the tanto that i learned from and am putting into use on the katana.

This looks very good to me and being a first, a forged, and what I think is a difficult design to make I believe doing more will possibly make you a very fine maker !! Frank

Thanks! the katana im working on is going to incorporate a lot of things that i didn't like about my tanto. definitely learned a lot even from the one blade.

For example, it has very little distal taper (in width or thickness) and its tip heavy, so today i forged out the 1 1/2in D2 round stock i have to a 1in wide x 9/32ish tapering nicely to 7/32ish x 34ish inches overall and im going to taper the width as well and adjust weight and length of the blade. and some point im going to try and forge a bo-hi (probably in test pieces before wagering my pre-katana) all these little differences will hopefully make a difference in the feel of the blade.

 

[Schleifstein]

Hell yeah, man! I think this qualifies as "taking the bull by the horns" on your first blade. Difficulty goes up every blade inch. Bonus points for doing the saya your self!
-Solidarity for all the broke @$$ college students of this forum :thumbup:

 

[Willie71]

That is awesome for a first! I have only made about 15 or so, but I can agree with the others that longer blades are much more difficult to pull off well. My last three have all been over 10" blades, and keeping them straight and flat, with flowing lines is much more difficult than on a 3" blade. I haven't forged anything yet. I look forward to what you come up with in the future.

 

[rock3r4life]

Ive always been one to jump in headfirst. Theres no better teacher than experience. sure things suck in the beginning if ya just jump on in but you'll get up to snuff pretty quickly

 

[Hengelo_77]

sweet