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- Oct 20, 2008
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Okay. I started a separate thread for this to continue, for the sake of simplicity. Some folks had expressed an interest in seeing this knife progress and I'd like to share as well.
Disclaimer: This will not be a meticulously crafted WIP with excellent photos. I have a dialup connection, have to upload in 640x480 and it's still slow. Days will go by when I post nothing new here. I have several irons in the fire and this one is my "build whatever the heck I feel like" piece. It may take me a couple of weeks. Also, no refunds will be issued in the reasonably likely event that this thread ends in disaster.
I'll generally show progress on one side of the knife. This is also for the sake of brevity; rest assured that I've probably posted the better looking side to show you... Also, feel free to chime in if you've got something to teach me. I see this stuff as a two way street.
Here we go, I hope you enjoy. I've pasted in the body of the beginning of the other thread to start with.
I took a piece of W1, 1" round by 8" long and forged it into this blade. I got this steel from Deker, I love this stuff and it's priced so right.
Usually when I forge an integral, I leave the bolster area round and fairly thick, 5/8" or so. I thought I'd try something a bit different on this one. While a large blade, I want it to have a slim feel, so I forged the bar down to about 1/2" thick by 1" wide stock, then used my guillotine fuller to set down the start of the blade and the plunge about 7/8" apart. The resulting bolster is about 1/2" thick right now and will be a little slimmer when ground clean.
After setting the bolster, I forged the 2" to the right of the shoulder into a full tang, I guess about 4-1/2" long. It'll be tapered by grinding.
Then I forged the blade steel to the left of the bolster into a kind of hybrid camp/bowie thing. The blade has a mild clip which will be a little more pronounced after profiling. I forged the entire rest of the bar into a blade, I just figured I'd find out how long it wanted to be. It's been normalized twice.
Hammer wise, I broke the stock down with an 8# double jack, did most of the shaping with my 6# straight peen, and wet-finish-forged the bevels with my 3-1/2# flat faced cross peen. Now I have a couple blisters...
There is a lot of steel in one of those drops, the overall length is 15-1/4" and the blade is 10" from tip to bolster. I plan for this blade to get green canvas micarta, SS corbys, and a hamon.
The blade is profiled. I threw a little bit of style into the grip area, and defined the clip more.
The bolsters get flattened up roughly.
The blade with the scale roughed off of it. I did this and the preceding steps with a dull 36 grit Blaze. I keep roughly 20 of these hanging on the wall of the grinding room expressly for this purpose. Scale just kills a new belt. The blade is clamped on a board with a square hole sunk into it at the bolster. The board is clamped into my little post vise.
A closeup of my quickie knife board and the bolster area, still super rough.
The bolsters defined more and the transitions roughly cleaned up and shaped with hand files. The files I used to do it. These radii are small, I cant get my ½ wheel in there so I did it by hand. I prefer to do this slowly anyway.
The bolsters matched up better, still roughly.
More to come.
Disclaimer: This will not be a meticulously crafted WIP with excellent photos. I have a dialup connection, have to upload in 640x480 and it's still slow. Days will go by when I post nothing new here. I have several irons in the fire and this one is my "build whatever the heck I feel like" piece. It may take me a couple of weeks. Also, no refunds will be issued in the reasonably likely event that this thread ends in disaster.
I'll generally show progress on one side of the knife. This is also for the sake of brevity; rest assured that I've probably posted the better looking side to show you... Also, feel free to chime in if you've got something to teach me. I see this stuff as a two way street.
Here we go, I hope you enjoy. I've pasted in the body of the beginning of the other thread to start with.
I took a piece of W1, 1" round by 8" long and forged it into this blade. I got this steel from Deker, I love this stuff and it's priced so right.
Usually when I forge an integral, I leave the bolster area round and fairly thick, 5/8" or so. I thought I'd try something a bit different on this one. While a large blade, I want it to have a slim feel, so I forged the bar down to about 1/2" thick by 1" wide stock, then used my guillotine fuller to set down the start of the blade and the plunge about 7/8" apart. The resulting bolster is about 1/2" thick right now and will be a little slimmer when ground clean.
After setting the bolster, I forged the 2" to the right of the shoulder into a full tang, I guess about 4-1/2" long. It'll be tapered by grinding.
Then I forged the blade steel to the left of the bolster into a kind of hybrid camp/bowie thing. The blade has a mild clip which will be a little more pronounced after profiling. I forged the entire rest of the bar into a blade, I just figured I'd find out how long it wanted to be. It's been normalized twice.
Hammer wise, I broke the stock down with an 8# double jack, did most of the shaping with my 6# straight peen, and wet-finish-forged the bevels with my 3-1/2# flat faced cross peen. Now I have a couple blisters...
There is a lot of steel in one of those drops, the overall length is 15-1/4" and the blade is 10" from tip to bolster. I plan for this blade to get green canvas micarta, SS corbys, and a hamon.
The blade is profiled. I threw a little bit of style into the grip area, and defined the clip more.
The bolsters get flattened up roughly.
The blade with the scale roughed off of it. I did this and the preceding steps with a dull 36 grit Blaze. I keep roughly 20 of these hanging on the wall of the grinding room expressly for this purpose. Scale just kills a new belt. The blade is clamped on a board with a square hole sunk into it at the bolster. The board is clamped into my little post vise.
A closeup of my quickie knife board and the bolster area, still super rough.
The bolsters defined more and the transitions roughly cleaned up and shaped with hand files. The files I used to do it. These radii are small, I cant get my ½ wheel in there so I did it by hand. I prefer to do this slowly anyway.
The bolsters matched up better, still roughly.
More to come.
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