How I Spent My Wednesday Afternoon

Rust

Rust

Joined
Sep 29, 2001
Messages
119
Alright, I finally got the pic:

<IMG SRC="http://www.bmts.com/~othrside/knife.jpg">

Forged from a Canadian-made file. Definitely not a khukuri, but inspired by the shape. The furniture consists of a brass guard in the shape of a leaf, some copper pipe end cap, and a dished disc of wood grain metal for the butt cap. The blade is extraordinarily hard, and a file won't bite even the slightest bit.

Here's where I screwed up. I failed to temper the blade properly, largely due to impatience, and managed to snap the blade close to the hilt while fitting the furniture. The welding job is weak and messy, and not especially attractive. After that accident, I was less concerned with making an attractive knife, and didn't put in the effort I could have. The wood grain metal is of poor quality, and has a poor fit. The wood of the handle is cracked, due to overhandling.

I've found that despite the mess I made of this knife, it is an excellent thrusting blade, and is no slouch at slashing or draw cuts either.

Addendum: I forgot to mention. This knife is about 11.25" long, with a blade length of 8.25".
 
...You're first effort wasn't perfect, so gritch, gritch, gritch :D A perfectionist is never happy, but with a start like that, you'll make it. If that blade was sent to BirGorkha, as a model, it just might come back with a cho :)
 
Funny you should mention that, Walosi. As I welded the blade back together, and melted a big-arse notch into the base of the blade, I kept thinking that the blade now had a cho.

And I'm not berating my skill, really. I'm impressed that I should come out with this, as my second-ever forged knife. Furthermore, I know exactly how I screwed up, and I can and will easily avoid making the same mistakes twice.
 
The fact that you got it together is impressive. Hardening a blade properly isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. Practice, practice, practice.
 
Next time, I use the Japanese method. Hard hamon, by wrapping the back of the blade in clay.
 
Rust, great job! What did you use as a quench? If you used water I'd suggest using ATF next time. (ATF is flammable, use fire precautions, and long tongs to keep from getting burned) Also, when you heat the blade to a cherry red (non-magnetic) make sure the tang isn't quite as hot. When quenching don't quench the tang, but move the blade up and down so that there isn't an abrupt transition between hard and soft. Clean the scale and oil(completely degrease) off of the blade and place it in your oven at 350 degrees or so. The blade should turn a straw color; hold it at this temperture for a couple of hours. When done, take the blade out of the oven and back to your forge. Lay the end of your tang on top of the fire using no air blast. Watch as the tempering colors slowly work from the end of the tang through the junction of the blade and tang. Make sure that this transition reaches a deep blue. Cool the blade at this point in the ATF. Sand off the oxidation colors, degrease and repeat twice more. If you are interested in doing a differential temper on the blade, go to Tim Lively's website. He has a picture tutorial on heattreating and primitive bladesmithing. When I actually was doing some bladesmithing I used techniques very similar to his with good results.
I wish you well with your adventures in bladesmithing.:) stevomiller
 
Steve, when you say repete this 2 more times do you mean from the blade being cherry red to the end step? I'd like to try this too!

Great job Rust! :)
 
Thanks for the tips, Steve. I did temper the blade in the oven at 400 degrees, but as I said, I got impatient. I didn't leave it in nearly long enough. I haven't heard of re-tempering the tang before, though I think it makes good sense. Why three times, though? Once to deep blue should turn the junction into a spring, shouldn't it?

And yes, by the way; I did use water.

Oh yes, is there a trick to getting the edge down really fine without grinding? I was only able to get it to about a millimeter in most places. And the bevel... I wish I could have gotten that smoother, though the stretched file grain made a beautiful scale pattern along the spine. Practise makes perfect, I guess?
 
Chris B, I meant "repeat the tempering cycle you did to the tang/ricasso junction". When you heat this area using convective heat,ie a propane torch or your forge, it is difficulct for the heat to reach the center of the steel. Repeating this step numerous times helps to insure that you have drawn the temper back, or softened, the steel clear through. A better method is to use conduction to heat the areas you want to temper; conduction seems to heat the steel all the way to the core. You can accomplish this by heating up a chunk of steel in your forge to a red heat,removing it fom the forge, and then use this hot piece of steel for your heat source. Prepare the surface of the full hard blade as in the prev. post; now place the part you want to draw the temper on directly on the hot steel. Place the spine of blade on the block, edge of blade pointing up, and watch as the tempering colors work from the spine towards edge. You don't want the edge to go beyond the straw/bronze color. If at any time it looks like the edge might get too hot in any area, quench the blade to cool it, degrease/brighten and carry on till the spine is blue and the color gradient takes you to a straw the full length of the edge. Repeat this whole shebang three times for good measure. This technique will give your blade a springy back and a very hard edge.
 
Wow, sometimes I rattle on and don't even pay attention to q's people ask. Back to the q about "repeat 3x". Some steels that have a small amount of chromium in them, such as 5160(leaf springs, which HI uses for it's blades) and 52100(which is used for bearings) actually do perform better if they are put through three hardening cycles. Take the steel to nonmagnetic, hold for count of 30, quench in ATF; let rest 24 hours. Repeat 2x more, and temper as in my above post. Some things we haven't talked about are normalizing and annealing, which are the steps you'll want to do before you ever get to the hardening/tempering steps. After the blade is forged to shape, bring it up to the critical temperture (just past non-magnetic) and set it aside to cool in still air. This is normalizing, and 5160 and 52100 respond well to three cycles of this, 24 hrs between cycles. These past steps will equalise stress in the blade. Annealing is the next step, used to completely soften the blade so that you can file/grind it to shape easily. Heat the blade to critical temp, hold for count of 30, bury the blade in hot ashes completely and let it cool slloowwllyyyyy. It should be cool enough to handle in 24 hrs of so. File/grind blade to shape, sand or not to desired finish, and harden and temper as in my previous posts. :) stevomiller
 
But it does look like an excellent yatagan.

Not bad at all. Keep it up you will probably be there in a few more attempts. IIRC some well known maker commented that a corner of his shop held a large pile of failed attempts. This is good enough to show that you can do it, now start working on that pile.

n2s
 
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