first timer needing help

J.McDonald Knives

J.McDonald Knives

Basic Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2007
Messages
2,021
ive been wanting to make knives for years. i finally decided to have a go at it. ive done some blacksmithing when i was about 10yrs old. ive also done welding and soldering with a mapp gas torch (plumber). i have an angle grinder (4") and i can get my hands on almost anything i may need. my first project is to make a pig sticker out of a cheap sword. its a decorative sword that had a cheap handle and sheath which i have removed and they cant ever be used again except for firewood. since its a japanese style sword i figured that the curve of it would be good for use as a 12" long blade pig sticker. the reason why i want a pig sticker is that i live in the country in the middle of nowhere and plan to start trapping hogs sometime.

the metal im working with is about 1/4" thick and about 1"-3/4" tall with an upward curve. the wmount of room i have for the handle is about 6". first thing i wanna know is a good cheap method for hardening the blade and for it to have a quality edge on it and keep the edge. if i had the money i would get steel from solingen germany but i dont have that kind of luxory right now. can someone give me some good tips for making my knife. thanks.
 
Sadly, it is unlikely that a cheap Japanese sword ,like you describe , will harden any more than it is now. You could break it off where you want and grind a new point, but it will never be a knife that you can bet your life on.
You would be best served to order a pre-made blade from Texas Knife supply ,or some other supplier, and finish it with your own handle. They carry sheaths to fit most of the blades they sell.
Another good option is to hook up with a maker in your area and have him/her help you with making your first knife.
Stacy
 
i have tested out the metal itself by swinging it at a cedar tree and as it is it seems to hold the edge nicely and not bend or chip. i mostly need it for stabbing a pig or anything else i hunt. the handle i can make myself. my grandpa has alot of tools for woodworking and when doing woodworking i tend to take my time to make it beautiful. since i live in the cowboy capital of the world there are plenty of leather shops and saddle makers that can make me a sheath for it. eventually i will purchase or make my own forge and make the knives thru blacksmithing techniques. one of my uncles is a master ferrier and has been making horse shoes for years. my other uncle does blacksmithing in his freetime. i can always ask them for tips in that field. i know i can make a good knife for its purpose out of this sword. its actually not a full sword. its the next size down (cant think of the name).
 
The steel of the blade would need to be known to reheat treat it. Wakizashi is the common term for the shorter of the two shin-ken carried by samuria. If you find the metal type out you could aneal it, grind it and reheattreat it. Your unlce may be able to help get it to the right temp and probably knows how to quench it. If you find the info and are going to do it, check out the thread with all the how to's in it. You could spend days in there just reading all the different links. If it is a decorative Wakizashi it may be made out of junk steel and not be worth the time. Also Wild pig hunters tend to preffer a double edge bowie, a dagger or a standard bowie for pig sticking, but a short sword sounds fun lol.
 
if i need to i can grind the back side of it down so that its not so blunt. later on i plan to make more knives. im also a knife thrower and love my knives. on this one tho i may grind the back of it so that its straight and then put a fake edge on it. i like doing things from scratch. for some reason this metal seems to be stronger than most decorational swords i have come across. as it is now it doesnt seem like it was to bend easily or anything and seems to be pretty rigid.
 
Wakazashi.
OK, if this sword is what you will use,then here is a good guide to follow.
Dull the edge so it is not sharp.Use your angle grinder to grind a groove where you want the new tip to be.Clamp the sword in a good size vise,clamping between two boards to avoid scratching it. The place you want the blade to break should be about 1/2" beyond the final point of the new knife (leaves some to grind off). Wrap the blade sticking out with plenty of duct tape.Put on a long sleeve sweat shirt, safety glasses,and gloves.Made sure there is nothing you will fall on if you go over backward.Get a good grip and give the blade a smooth bend (if possible,put a piece of pipe over the blade).One of two things will happen. It will break quickly,or it will bend .If it breaks,good, If it bends,bend back and forth until it breaks.You may have to bent with a lot of force.The blade may shatter (thus the duct tape). Once shortened,remove the "knife" ,and tape the blade off (to prevent scratching) up to the tip area.Now grind the tip to the desired shape. Dipping in water regularly. Don't let it get hot enough to turn blue. Slowly shape the end.When shaped right,start sanding the new tip with wet-or-dry paper backed with a wood block. Start with 100 and work up to 400 (or finer if you want). Avoid scratching the rest of the blade. You can hand sand the entire blade to give it an even satin finish,or leave the blade as is and sand the tip as smooth as you want.When all is right,make and mount the handle. Have the sheath made at this point. When the sheath is ready, you can sharpen the edge and go hog hunting.
Stacy
 
does the fact that it bends or breaks indicate how good the metal is? what would indicate a good metal to use for a knife that will get a razor sharp edge and keep the edge? what is the perfect tensile strength for a knife blade?
 
Bend, Break, Flex,Tensile Strength,Razor Sharp -- All different things.
Bend - Indicates low hardening.Could be poor HT,or cheap steel.
Break - Indicates too much hardening (if it breaks easily).Improper HT.
Flex - Indicates a properly HT blade. The blade deflect a small amount and return to straight.This blade will hold up to use and should have a good edge.
Tensile strength - The amount of force a material will withstand before being pulled apart.Not usually a concern in knives.
Razor Sharp - The most misused term in knives. Unless you are making razors, you don't want razor sharp.(I know it is a term meant to mean really,really sharp). What you want is a properly sharp blade. A sharp ax and a sharp razor have very different edge geometry. Both are sharp.
Stacy
 
There is no way to tell how the steel was Heat treated without further testing. If the blade bends it could be good steel heat treated badly or non knife steel. If it breaks look at the broken ends. If it looks like a bunch of little craters (large grain structure) it is probably not a good steel. If it looks like smoothe gray uniform (small grain) it might be a good steel. Not knowing the type of steel can be a real drawback and there are not any easy do it yourself tests to tell what you have accurately. This is why most makers use known steel/buy it from a dealer. A good steel to begin with is 1095. It is a high carbon steel available from admiral steel. Another option is 5160, Leaf springs are normaly made of 5160. It can be forged or if you can find a straight enough piece annealed, straightened and ground. Both of the above steels are good for beginners. As far as keeping an edge, that depends on too many factors to guarentee anything. Mostly in the way the steel is heat treated. Also the steps leading up to the HT have an impact. Tensil strength for a blade, well we usually talk more in Rockwell Hardness. Somewere in the RC 59-60 is the target. What you can do with your sword is do as Stacy describes above then take the end you are not using and do some heat treating to see what it will do. If you do not have any books on knifemaking yet you need to get some. The Wonder of Knifemaking by Wayne Goddard is a great choice. Keep on the forums and learn as much a possible. And above all Have Fun

Chuck
 
I believe he wants to just grind the broken sword down to a new point and not redo the HT.
 
I think putting a new point of a sword is a great thing to learn on.

All you need is a few fiules and some sand paper and you are done.
I dont think you even have to worry at all about the heat-treating.

Just file or grind a point, sand it enough to look cool and you are done.
 
i live near a lake and im sure i can find leaf springs out there lol. my plan is to learn knife making by starting with something that is already a knife or tool and studying the difference in metals and how to achieve the right hardness.i also plan to later on once i get good start making throwing knives and a sword or two for myself. i know everyone uses files to make knives and i like doing things no one else has or something not many people do. for example i want to put a 10" lift on my subaru and keep it as a transaxle and put 35" tires on it. i like to try and be original. with knife making the only way to be original is to learn howto do it properly before doing things no one else has or very few people do. i appreciate all the help here. any of my creations i will post pics of. i also wanna post a pic of the knife that got me interested in making my own. that knife means alot to me. it was originally my grandpas hunting knife when my mom was a kid. it was made sometime after WWII. the reason why i know the time frame is that it has plastic in the handle. the blade is from solingen germany. the hilt and butt cap are german nickel silver. the handle is layered leather with red and white plastic accents. the reason why i have the knife is that one day my grandpa was replacing the boards in the kitchen cabnet because the old ones had water damage. well when he pulled them up and was cleaning out under it he found the knife. the blade was black and pitted and needed alot of work done to it. i asked him what he wanted to do with it and he said i could have it if i wanted to but only if i restored it. he set me up with the equipment to restore it. he put a cloth wheel on his bench grinder and handed me a block of something. i think it was white diamond or something like that. it was used for jewerly or something like that. but i did the work do it and brought the metal back to life. i still have some work to do to it near the hilt to make it perfect but the blade and handle are about 95-99% finished and i put an edge on it sharp enough to shave the hair on my arms and legs. it keeps its edge very well even with the oil from the human body. its thick and strong and is well balanced. im gonna use it when cleaning deer and other animals. that knife has alot of sentimental value to me cause my grandpa passed away december 5th. i dont even plan to get rid of the knife and i plan to continue to use it for the rest of my life. if anyone knows about what year a knife like that was made please let me know.
 
Hello, everyone. I'm Yassen from Eastern Europe - Bulgaria.
I'm just begining to making knives from zero. I will buy a belt and disk sander from the cheapones like thisone http://images.grizzly.com/grizzlycom/pics/jpeg288/g/g0547.jpg . I know you will say - this is too weak to grind a knife (only half a horse power), and you can do only flat grind with it, but for the moment i dont have enough money to collect all the tools and mashines i need. I'll begin to grind on 4X13(russian GOSTstandarts) steel - simmilar to 420. Wish me luck. I'll post some pictures when I'm ready at some point when I have a finished blade. I hope you will help me with advice when I'm stuck. I know that 420 steel is air harden steel. where I can read about air hardening and do I need special cammeras and forges to do it, or I can do it in a comment blacksmith coal forge? Excuse me for my poor english.
Greetings from Bulgaria.
 
PimpinSquee said:
if i had the money i would get steel from solingen germany but i dont have that kind of luxory right now

my plan is to learn knife making by starting with something that is already a knife or tool and studying the difference in metals and how to achieve the right hardness.
Click to expand...

Welcome to Bladeforums! You're in the right place to gets lots of great information on your project, as you can already see.

It seems like there are two different ideas going back and forth here, and it's hard to tell which one you were actually asking for.

If what you're trying to do is make yourself a pointy tool for stabbing pigs, then you've got real good directions from bladsmth, Stacy Apelt. He knows what he's talking about!

On the other hand, if what you want to learn is heat treating... hardening, tempering, achieving flexibility and edge-holding, then what you need is a different sort of project. There a couple reasons for that.
First is, no-one knows what sort of steel your sword is made of. You heat treat different steels in different ways, so if you don't know which steel it is, you don't know what's the right way to heat treat it (you could guess, but the odds of getting it right are slim, and you won't learn as much from doing it wrong 100 times as you will from doing it right twice.)

Second, if it's a decorative sword, it's probably not high-quality knifemaking steel. That is to say, it might not be POSSIBLE to heat-treat it right. You could try forever and never get anywhere.

Also, it's probably stainless steel. And whether it's high-quality stainless steel suitable for working knives, or lower quality stainless steel suitable for decorative pieces, either way, heat-treating stainless steels is a complicated process that takes some special equipment. Not for beginners, not the place to learn heat-treating.

So again, if you want a pig-stabbing tool, this project is a good way to go. You'll have a sharp piece of steel that will kill a pig just as dead as a bullet will. It'll definitely get the job done.

BUT if you want to learn about heat-treating knives, you need a completely different project. You mentioned that you didn't have luxury money for steel, but you don't need it! 12 feet (many month's worth) of high-quality carbon steel (1095 or 1075/1085) will cost you about twenty bucks... including shipping. I mean, a pizza and a two-liter cost that much any more. There are a number of good suppliers out there, I like www.admiralsteel.com.

Buy a bar or two of carbon steel, grind yourself a knife out, and heat treat THAT. Then you'll be learning about how to heat treat knives! (And you can read around bladeforums.com a little bit, and find so much heat-treating information your head will spin.)

Good luck to ya!
Mike
 
thanks ike for that info. i actually wanna learn both things. i want to learn all taht i can when it comes to knife making. when it comes to learning something i learn it rather quickly. i used to tie flies for fly fishing. i could watch a vid of how to make the fly and turn around and duplicate it. i learn by watching more than reading. im gonna search the internet for vids on knife making and also reading material. im also a computer nerd and know how to find what i need. if something is on the internet i can find it. i am very greatful for all the help yall have provided me. if yall have links to vids that would be great. i always do my research before begining a project. so i wont start on this until i learn more and watch a few vids or watch a few craftsmen in my area.

(edit) i just shortened the knife down to just over 12" by bending it. it bent and then snapped. i looked at the grains and it looks a little rough. it kinda feels like sandpaper to the feel. will this still work for what i want it to do? if not i can go searching around for the right metal.
 
If you are going to rely on this blade I would recommend getting some known steel and find a maker in your area to help you out on your first attempts at HT. I would hate to go to stick a hog and the blade break on you. Not the best time to have a failure. You have a lot of good advise posted here, look around some more and read all the posts you can. Center cross productions have a great selection of videos from basic to advanced. Good luck

Chuck
 
ok. the fact that the blade fist bent and then snapped means that its not a good metal? and the fact that its kinda rough means it not a good metal am i right? even if its not a good metal i can still use it as a prototype and a practice piece. i sketched out a tip for it with a sharpie. i plan to take it to my grandpas house 50 miles away and use his bench grinder to bring it close to that shape and then start working on the angle of it. while im there im also gonna look around for some other steel i can use. im also gonna see if i can find some leaf springs and use them. if i could find a forge in his shop that i can bring back with me that would be great. im gonna try and bring back a belt sander or something.
 
No one can say weather the steel is good or not unless they had it and could do some testing. Like Stacey pointed out it could be just a bad heat treat. What I feel safe saying is do not trust your life on it. If you want to practice with it great. If you can do some heat treat testing on the tip you broke off it might tell you more. If you start with a known steel you can apply known practices to provide a satisfactory outcome. It will be good to read and watch videos or take a couple of classes. Many makers will be glad to give lessons.

Chuck
 
I'm going to try and give you some of the best advise you may get this week.
Put the blade down on the work bench,close the door,and go order two or three books on knife making.Until you understand more about what is going on,you will only do yourself a disservice,and may injure yourself. I am not saying this to be a hard ass on you. I am saying it to help you start on the road to making good knives.Order two of these - "The $50 Knife Shop",by Wayne Goddard;"How to Make Knives",by Loveless;"Step-by-Step Knifemaking",by David Boye;or "The Complete Bladesmith",by Hrisoulas.
These are the books that many makers learned from.Once you've read a couple (maybe several times through) you will be able to ask better questions and understand the answers better.
Next ,find a maker near you to help you learn. Reading about the granular look of a broken piece of steel is one thing - seeing it in your hand is a better thing.
I really want you to succeed in this. If you are not able to afford the books right now, I'll loan you a couple. You might also check the local library ,they often have books on knife making.
Taking your time is the way to enter a craft like this. Learn -do-learn more-do more.....never stop learning.
Stacy

BTW ,I don't think I said - "Welcome to the Forums"
 
BRAVO STACY BRAVO :thumbup: :D :thumbup:

I agree it is the best advice so far. Learn from the beginning and do not try to jump in too fast. It will only lead to frustration and like Stacy said maybe injury.

Chuck
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top