Welcome Raider Jameson,
OK, here goes:
1) Fill out your profile so we know where you live. That info will allow us to tell you what materials are available in your location. It may also allow another maker to send you some good materials. Right now, all I know is that you are 16.
1)a) Read the stickies and the part on metallurgy. It has a lot of helpful info.
2) Using a known steel is the best choice. That isn't always possible for some folks. If you can't buy known steel, use a steel you know what it did and the likely alloy. Leaf springs from cars and trucks will make an OK knife. Coil springs work well, too. Old files usually work, but more and more of the newer ones are case hardened. Farm tools like hay-rake tines work well. Old two-man saws are great. You can find online lists of what steel many materials are made of. These lists are often very old and not necessarily accurate for modern tools. Use your judgement before making a blade from an unknown steel. Your spark test and quench-break test are good ways to separate the bad choices. But, it is good to know that even a piece of low carbon welding steel will throw parks and break in a water quench.
The biggest example of change is saw blades. The old circular saw blades were good knife steel. Now, circular blades have carbide tips or are made from chrome-steel alloys. These don't make good knives.
3) Quenching in water is very risky. It can crack a blade or put micro-cracks inside it that may come out later and cause a failure. Oil is the preferred quenchant. If you don't have the funds and access to a commercial quenchant like Parks #50 or AAA use canola oil. Use at least a gallon, with two or three is better, Use a tall metal container and have a lid for it. The oil will last a long time if you keep it clean and covered. Warm the oil to 120-130°F/50-55°C before quenching., Simplest way to warm the oil is to heat a piece of rebar or other metal and quench it in the tank and stir the oil with it. Check the temperature with a frying thermometer or cheap laser thermometer.
If using a water quench is your only option, use brine. Dissolve 3 pounds of salt in four gallons of water, and warm it to 100-120°F/40-50°C.
4) Read the sticky on "How to Instructions for making a Knife".
These are the instructions I use to get someone started with a profiled stainless steel knife blank. I thought there might be those who could use the tutorial and pointers. Some details are specific to a particular knife project, but the info is universal. You can start with a bar of any type of...
www.bladeforums.com
That is a basic guide to making a knife. You can do it with a file and simple tools.
4)a) Forging is a skill that takes lots of practice, so using your "found steel" is OK. The biggest error people make when teaching themselves to forge is forging too cold. The steel should be bright orangs to orange-yellow when forging and you stop and put back in the heat by bright red. Never forge in the red to dull red range or it may cause cracks in the finished blade. Never forge a cold blade beyond mild straightening. All forging work need to be stress relived and normalized. To do that, heat to a full red color and let cool to black. Heat to a full red color and quench. Heat to a medium red color and let cool to black two or three times. This will leave the forged blade with a fine grain and soft structure called
pearlite. It will file/sand/grind much easier. To remove the hard forge scale on the blade soak for 2 to 10 hours in a solution of Sodium Bi-sulfate (Ph down from the hardware or pool supply). Use about a pound of NaHSO4 per gallon in a plastic bucket. The solution can be used many times, but store in a tightly closed plastic container. Rinse off with running water and wire brush the sludge off. It will file and grind much easier with the scale gone.
5)
Grinding the knife. You can make a knife using files, whetstones, grinding wheels, or a belt grinder. The belt grinder is what most knifemakers use. Whatever tool you use, the trick is to go slow and evenly remove the metal from both sides. The best method of keeping the sides even is to flatten the edge into the desired curvature and scribe a line down the center. Simplest way to do that is to take a drill bit a little larger/smaller that the edge thickness, lay or clamp it to the table top or a board, and slide the edge along the point. Flip the blade over and repeat. This leaves two parallel lines on the edge. Grind the edge at about 45° to each line. Now you have an established center to grind/shape the bevels to.
Some folks who forge a blade leave the upper surface in the rough as-forged condition and only clean up the lower bevel and edge. This is called Brute-de-Forge. What ever method you use , go slow and try and get an even flat surface. Once the basic bevels have been made, switch to hand sanding. Use wet-or-dry type sandpaper like 3-M or whatever the auto store or hardware carries (it usually has a black surface). Get several sheets each of it in 80, 120, 220, and 400 grit. Cut the sheet of sandpaper into three or four pieces and wrap the paper around a block of hard wood or a piece of steel or aluminum. You don't want to sand with just folded paper and your fingers. Put a few drops of dish soap in a small tub of water and dip the sanding block in it often. Sand evenly and go up the grits until you like the look. Don't move to a finer grit until all the scratches from the last grit are gone. Change the sheet when it stops cutting well, as there is little economy in trying to sand with worn out paper. Stop sanding at 220-grit and leave the edge flat at about half the thickness of a dime (.03" or .75mm)
6) Heat treatment - Once the sanding is done to 220-grit it is time to harden the knife. Heat to the point when a magnet stops sticking to the blade. The simplest way to determine this is to stick a cheap welding magnet or similar magnet to the side of the forge (or near it) and regularly touch the blade to the magnet. As it gets red it will suddenly stop sticking to the magnet. This is the Curie point where the atoms re-arrange the structure to
austenite. The knife nerds call it the A1c point. The blade will be around 1425°F/775°C at this point. Heat just about 75 °F/25°C hotter, which is just about one shade redder and around 1475-1500°F/800-815°C. Try and evenly heat the blade, but remember that the edge is what you want properly hardened. When the edge is at that color (the rest can be cooler), immediately quench by plunging tip first into the tank of warm quenchant. Move it up and down, but not sideways and keep in the quenchant for a count of ten. Pull out and immediately straighten and warp or twist. The blade will stay very soft and pliable until it reaches 400°F/200°C, when it transforms into
martensite, which is very hard and brittle. STOP and straightening when the blade stiffens up. Let cool in the air until room temp, and then temper twice in the kitchen oven at 450°F/230°C. Temper one hour each cycle. Between the two temper cycles, cool the blade with running water and then put back for the second hour.
7) Final finish - Go back to the 220-grit paper and re-sand the blade completely to remove the surface decarb. During this re-sanding refine the edge to about .010'/.25mm or a bit less (I call it near-sharp) and then go to the 400-grit paper to get a final surface. Later on, you can go higher grit, but in the beginning 400-grit is plenty smooth. Don't sharpen the blade until you are done with the handle work. Once the handle is installed and the glue (epoxy is best) is dry, sharpen the blade at around 20° per side.
8)
" I also have only been doing this since i cut off part of one of my fingers at the beginning of this year" - Now you know, we aren't going to let you go without hearing how you cut part of your finger off. Don't feel afraid of telling us how dumb you were, because most of us here in Shop Talk have a short finger (or two) from similar errors. The catch phrase around here is, "Pictures or it didn't happen".
9) Pictures of your blades and equipment will also help us give you advice.
10) The most important thing is to have fun making knives. Don't worry too much about them being perfect for now. Just do it as good as you can and improve something each time. Post photos here so the chaps that have more experience can give you some pointers.
I started forging at age 11 with no equipment at all besides my home brew forge, a ball pein hammer, a little bench grinder, and a file, and my knives were pretty ugly for a long time. 60 years later they look a bit better, but I still make an ugly knife every now and then.
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
guide you through this.
