Knife #2 Railroad Spike, Butter Knife?

[Blue Sasquatch]

This is my second attempt at a knife, made this one out of a railroad spike, I am waiting on some stock steel, and instead of making another scrap steel knife, I thought I would try to make some knives out of Railroad Spikes, They are pretty cool looking IMO, alot of people seem to like them.

Anyways, here is my attempt at a tomahawk, before using my brain, I just heated the spike and hammered away like crazy, which is the opposite of the correct thing to do, probably why this spike turned into a spoon, and then a chisel and now a trowel.

Not sure how many people here have tried to do the same, or have any blacksmithing skills, but I could not get the metal to fold back into itself, it would fold, but the distinction between them remained very clear. . . I am using a acetylene/oxygen torch which isn't the best, and a sledge hammer for an anvil. . . Is it a heating issue or something? It isn't needed for the knifes I want to make, but It would be nice to know in general for future projects.

Here is a double twist handle for my knife, I first marked lines on all 4 sides with a chisel after heating, then used a vice to help twist the metal. Really happy with how nice it turned out for my first twist attempt.

This is 2 full twists, I'm tempted to try reverse twists? Kinda fun stuff.

This is the rough hammering of the blade, learned to hit the metal at an angle, heated the bottom more than the top, the metal went down more than out in all directions (Like the tomahawk did) still looks like a cave-man went at it.

I shaped it a little bit more, and then hit it with a grinder to shape it a bit more, then did some quick file work on the two sides, no bevel but draw filed it to create a more flush side, which worked really well compared to what it was, still some work that needs to be done to it.

Attempted to do some fancy file work on the top of the knife, the photo is sorta blurry, but the idea is very similar to alot of the other knives I've seen people make. I believe it's just a round file (I know there's a name for them, rat tail? ) followed with straight file marks, in a serpentine pattern. I really just need to slow down and try to space things better.

This is the other side of the blade, you can see some of the fancy file work I was attempting to do.

Overall the whole thing took me maybe 3-4 hours. Not great, but for some reason I'm pretty #### pleased with it.

What I've learned, and will attempt to do tomorrow is:

• Elongate the steel first, by hammering on all four sides
• When twisting, end in a half (1.5, 2.5, 3.5 twists) this will allow the thin edge of the nail to be pointing up, leading to less metal needing to be drawn down.
• Curve the entire knife handle and all, so when drawing down the metal I end up with a more knife shape than butter knife.

I know this doesn't even come close to blacksmithing, but It is awfully fun to do, I really enjoyed learning some tricks and I still can't believe how well the handle twisted.

Thoughts, comments, advice?

Thanks for reading folks!!

 

[tryppyr]

I often wish I had a forge and could bend metal like this. Looks like a fun project.

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

Good getting started!

Welcome to Bladeforums. I'm in CO too.

Do some reading on forging temperatures and the progression of shapes in a forged knife. That will help you out a lot, forging at the wrong temp will damage the steel.

You mention trying to forge weld two pieces together; that is a very advanced technique. I'd do some reading here, there is all the information you need. There are a lot of great books on Blacksmithing as well that can really help with temperatures and technique.

Keep at it, it's great you have some steel coming in too.