I've had this cheap forge I bought off of ebay for about 6 years. Fired it up (after having it for a year, this should set the tone for the pace), found out the burners were built wrong. Seller didn't exist anymore. They were patterned after Reil EZ burners but used copper pipe and had a hole punched in way to large. The dragons breath about burned my garage roof down. I build my own EZ burners and it works fairly well. Then it got shoved into a corner and lots of other stuff stored in front of it.
Go back two weekends and I clean the garage out and pull the forge to the front. Since it was out already I fired it up to make sure everything was still OK. Since it was fired up I figured I might as well heat a bar of steel and give it a few wacks. Since I was already hitting it I figured I would play around and learn a bit about the steel movement. Since I had already done a bunch of shaping I wondered if I could make it looks like a knife blade. Since I had a knife blade I figured I should just finish out the tang. Oh I made my first knife lets grind
All the forging was done on Saturday evening/night. I spent a bunch of Sunday and Monday doing the grinding. I only had a 6x48 in my woodworking shop to work with so there's plenty of problems, but it came out pretty OK for a first effort. Convex primary grind.
Did the Heat Treat in a borrowed lab oven and quenched in 5 quarts of Canola oil (I had one of those 40mm ammo cans in the house someone gave me years ago so I used that as a container)
Made the scales out of Claro Walnut with a BLO finish. Scales are epoxied on and the pins are peened, these should never come off no matter what. Sharpened it up and used it to cut out the leather for the sheath (8oz veg tan leather remnants from a shoe maker who used it to make loafer soles). Touched up the blade and it shaves and push cuts through paper (a big step up for me so I'm learning how to sharpen knives better at the same time). Final edge done with a Lanskey jig I'm finally figuring out how to use properly.
Forged the blade first, probably not the right order but hey I didn't even have a plan so the fact that I got a decent knife is a bonus. Did a tiny bit of grinding to see what it looked like.
After grinding everything straight and clean. Had some really deep hammer blows from my lack of experience but I left it a little thick to be safe so everything came out ok in the end.
Fully finished.
It's hard to see because of the bad grind but there's a tiny bit of a choil that extends about an 1/8" in front of the bottom of the scales. I learned about file jigs after I screwed up the grind.
3 1/8" blade, 3 1/2" tang.
Kind of kicking myself now for not taking more time on the blade polish.
Edit: Typo's
Go back two weekends and I clean the garage out and pull the forge to the front. Since it was out already I fired it up to make sure everything was still OK. Since it was fired up I figured I might as well heat a bar of steel and give it a few wacks. Since I was already hitting it I figured I would play around and learn a bit about the steel movement. Since I had already done a bunch of shaping I wondered if I could make it looks like a knife blade. Since I had a knife blade I figured I should just finish out the tang. Oh I made my first knife lets grind
All the forging was done on Saturday evening/night. I spent a bunch of Sunday and Monday doing the grinding. I only had a 6x48 in my woodworking shop to work with so there's plenty of problems, but it came out pretty OK for a first effort. Convex primary grind.
Did the Heat Treat in a borrowed lab oven and quenched in 5 quarts of Canola oil (I had one of those 40mm ammo cans in the house someone gave me years ago so I used that as a container)
Made the scales out of Claro Walnut with a BLO finish. Scales are epoxied on and the pins are peened, these should never come off no matter what. Sharpened it up and used it to cut out the leather for the sheath (8oz veg tan leather remnants from a shoe maker who used it to make loafer soles). Touched up the blade and it shaves and push cuts through paper (a big step up for me so I'm learning how to sharpen knives better at the same time). Final edge done with a Lanskey jig I'm finally figuring out how to use properly.
Forged the blade first, probably not the right order but hey I didn't even have a plan so the fact that I got a decent knife is a bonus. Did a tiny bit of grinding to see what it looked like.
After grinding everything straight and clean. Had some really deep hammer blows from my lack of experience but I left it a little thick to be safe so everything came out ok in the end.
Fully finished.
It's hard to see because of the bad grind but there's a tiny bit of a choil that extends about an 1/8" in front of the bottom of the scales. I learned about file jigs after I screwed up the grind.
3 1/8" blade, 3 1/2" tang.
Kind of kicking myself now for not taking more time on the blade polish.
Edit: Typo's
