Forging a knife at school - pictures

Z

Zanuha

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Sep 27, 2010
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This is a followup to http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/880289-Newbie-forging-and-HT-questions
I'm fairly certain about what I'm going to do with it, so here are the pics. As I said in the title, I'm making this at school and I only have 2 hours of shop class every tuesday, so I can't spend that much time taking pictures. I'm also not going to take my 800-euro DSLR to school, so phone pictures will have to do until it's finished.

I started forging. Did some very basic shaping on the tip, thinned the tang with a grinder and got the spiral in it. I am going to do a bit of stock removal, but the majority is forging. I reserved 5 inches of steel for the blade, who knows how large it'll be if and when I thin and spread it. I realized that I don't have enough steel on the handle to make a full bend, so this'll be a subhilt.
Kuva003.jpg

If anyone has any more advice, I'll gladly take it.
 
Good Start, do you have a drawing of your intended end result or are you just free stylin??
 
That is cool you get to make a knife at school! Try that over here, and you would make the world news for being a terrorist. Keep us posted on your progress.
 
There's a picture of the knife I'm inspired by in the thread I linked to in the OP, but yeah, fairly freestyle. I also get to carry my Mini-Grip and Leatherman to school.
 
Your on your way now, great progress, now all that is left is some tweeking, you have a good start. Cheers Ron.
 
Forged the blade some more, tried to make the guard. Another change of plans, the guard will be only a slight curve.
Some idiots threw a metal pencil sharpener into the forge. It was actually really cool, after I poked it out onto the floor, it started glowing and melting and threw really bright, white sparks.
My Mini-Grip is there just for proof that I do get to carry it at school.
Kuva004.jpg
 
Also, I find that this steel is really hard to forge. The anvil I used when I started forging was dead, so I used another anvil that was hidden in a corner and had a much higher ''ping'' when struck. Gotta remember to get 3mm steel instead of 6mm next time.
 
I've scrapped this idea. I'm making it into a stick tang leuku type knife in my own forge. I'll keep putting pics of the progress here.
 
Wow I literally went to jail in highschool because I forgot to take an 8" skinner out of my truck from a pig hunt the night before.
 
Zanuha
If you want to get a close idea of what you can get/expect out of a piece of steel you are forging, make a mock-up piece with the same dimensions from modeling clay. Mash it out to the shape you intend the knife to be and see how it looks. Same principle as with the steel, you are in effect making it "plastic" and moving it with a hammer instead of your fingers. Helps you get a perspective on how the steel will respond to hammer blows in different areas. You can practice over and over with the clay (anywhere) until you get it fixed in your mind, before you actually forge the blade.

I was fortunate enough to be of the era that I carried a knife all the way through school and college, through airports, into the courthouse, etc. Even played with it at recess - M peg, split, whittling, etc. - never a problem.
Now look at things.....kind of tells you where the world is going!!
 
I've scrapped the leuku idea too. I'll forge it into two smaller knives instead to pass the time while I wait for my steel to come in the mail.
 
One is almost finished. Still need to round the handle some more and file it flat. I'll put some green canvas micarta scales on it.
IMG_3237.JPG
 
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