IDing forged knives

M

museummuscle

Joined
Mar 2, 2002
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10
Perhaps some of you might be able to help me. I like forged knives and have a fair collection. I look at an unidentified knife for waves in the blade, an imperfect finish and a slight out-of-straight...but some blades still mystify me. Some stock removed knives show some ripples, some forged are almost mirror-flat on the surface. Can you give me some more hints as to how to ID a forged knife. Also, what is the difference between hand forged, and drop-forged?

Thanks,
Museummuscle
 
Well hand forged is when a human swings the hammer and drop-forged is a machine where the steel is placed into a slot that is shaped in the desired shape and then the top piece falls down shaping the metal. A hammer can be drop-forged in two blows while it may take a smith hundreds to have the same result.

-Dan
 
You've got to remember that forging is just the beginning of the process. All of the finish work that comes after will be what creates your surface finish. ripples and waves usually come from the grinder, not the hammer. Consequently, you can't count of surface imperfections as any kind of indicator.

I can't really give you any suggestions as to how to tell a forged blade from a stock removed one short of asking the maker. With enough time and effort, you can generally make one look like the other. There are of course exceptions. Ray Smith's "Little Curly" knives that he puts a forged curl onto are a good example. It would be awfully hard to do that via stock removal (not, I said hard, not impossible...).

As for hand forging vs. drop forging. Hand forged knives are forged by a bladesmith with a hammer and anvil. Drop forging is an industrial process where a set of dies made with a negative of the piece to be created are used in a machine that brings the dies together with a lot of force to force the hot metal into a shape by pressing it into the die.

-d
 
I build forged knives, exclusively. I leave the bottom of the ricasso, in an as forged condition, so people will know, the blade has been forged. I may clean it up just a little but there is know doubt that the knife has forged.

Fred
 
A damascus knife can be very easily identified, as the pattern will distort towards the tip and around the ricasso area. For instance, if you have some lines running parallel to the cutting edge, they will get closer together and somewhat wavy as the knife width narrows out towards the tip.

I'm usually able to tell quickly by looking at the distortions in the pattern as to whether a damascus knife was forged to shape or was stock removal from flat stock damascus.

In reality however, all knives are forged. As an example:

Stock Removal is steel that has been roll forged at the manufacturer into bar stock. The grinding removes whatever isn't going to be part of the knife shape. The steel probably started out as an ingot that was 3 feet across by 15 feet long and was hot rolled (forged) down to the steel we use. That is a LOT of forging!

Forged knives are forged down from that original stock material to near net size knife shape. Then they are ground to clean up and refine the shape slightly. The forging we do, is in addition to the forging already done to that bar that came from a huge ingot.

So both are forged knives, it's just that a stock removal knife, has all the forging done at the steel manufacturer, where the forged knife has additional forging to a more precise shape. Both knife manufacturing styles involve a tremendous amount of forging before a knifemaker ever gets the material into his hot little hands.

Either method makes a great knife when a good design is heat treated correctly.

Just my thoughts on the subject.
 
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