Making a Bowie the Patton way, start to finish.

Phill, you must have a large homemade air hammer? Is it made off the plans of the simple airhammer? If it is how many blows per minute, & pounds per blow ?. From the stroke it has It looks like it would work that large round bar down pretty easy.
Shawn Ellis


Hi Shawn,
Yep, I built one based on Ron Kinyons design. The hammerhead, including the die, weighs 60 pounds. I wish I had made it heavier, but it does pretty good.
Each of the steps described above took 3 or 4 heats to do. Sure beats doing it by hand!
Something I've considered doing is bolting a heavy piece of steel to the front of the hammerhead to increase the weight. Theoretically, the piston should be able to handle a lot more weight then just 60 pounds. (at 100 psi it should be able to lift close to 300 pounds)
I don't know how many blows per minute. I would guess close to 200.
Overall, I love the air hammer. I wouldn't be doing damascus at all without it. If you're considering buying or building one, I highly recommend it. :)
 
I really enjoy the photos, please post more at every step along the way so that I can learn from your work.
I think too many step-by-step topics tend to jump too far ahead between photos and so they dont help us readers keep up and learn from the work being done.

I will enjoy seeing the first marks from the grinder so I can learn how you start out .
 
I really enjoy the photos, please post more at every step along the way so that I can learn from your work.
I think too many step-by-step topics tend to jump too far ahead between photos and so they dont help us readers keep up and learn from the work being done.

I will enjoy seeing the first marks from the grinder so I can learn how you start out .

Ok, I'll try to keep it detailed. Thanks.:)
 
i love these threads, but can never remember to do one until im 1/2 done with the blade!

love the hammer pics, looks like that thing sure enough strokes!
 
Ok, here it is just starting to forge the tip:
startingthepoint.jpg






And here with the tip finished. After I start forging in the bevel, I'll tweak the tip shape.
finishingpoint.jpg





I like to start forging the plunge area first, then bend the rest of the blade in preparation for doing the rest of the edge bevel. There's a couple steps here I couldn't get on camera... But here's the plunge/choil started.....
startingedge.jpg





And the plunge/choil finished, and just about to do the "banana".
readytobend.jpg





Here it is "banana-ed". For those who don't know why it gets bent like this, the reason is, when the edge gets forged, the steel expands and curves the blade the other way. So you pre-curve it. Sometimes I don't curve it enough, sometimes too much. This time I got it about perfect.
When the blade gets pre-curved, then straightened, it stretches lengthwise. So you have to take that into account when forging the plunge.... In this case, it stretched almost an inch.
banana.jpg
 
Here the edge is mostly forged in. The tip didn't curve up as much as it should have...
forgingbevel.jpg





...but that's easy to fix. Here it is basically done, just need to do the tang.
bevelshapefinished.jpg





If I had a hole through the upright support of the power hammer, I would forge the tang while it's still attached to the parent bar, but I don't, so I have to cut the blade from the bar, then forge the tang. Normally, I use a hot chisel to cut the blade free, but this blade is almost 5/16" thick, and 1-3/4" wide, and I want to finish this project before my grandkids get married. So, for the first time ever, I used a chop saw to cut it off.
cuttingoff.jpg





Cut off:
cutoff.jpg





I heat up the tang end, and hold the blade in my gloved hands to do this next step. I wish I could have got an action shot of forging the tang, but I had my hands full. :) Here it is after one heat:
firstheat.jpg





Here it is after the second heat. This step is so easy with the power hammer. Used to take me about half an hour by hand.
tangfinished.jpg





And that's all for today. Next step is thermal cycling, to get it ready for hardening. I like to do several blades at once, while I have the oven hot, so it we'll pick this up next week, when I have a couple more blades to do.
 
I should mention, with L6, you don't just forge it and let it air cool and then sit for a week. L6 is basically air hardening. You might end up with a cracked blade. So after forging I slow cool it, usually in the forge. Then pick up the heat treating whenever it's convenient.
 
Phillip- do you put the "plunge" bevel and choil by hand or under the hammer.... elaborate please.
 
Phillip- do you put the "plunge" bevel and choil by hand or under the hammer.... elaborate please.


I do it by hand. First I measure back from the point, and mark where I want the dropped edge to start, then I lay it on the edge of the anvil at an angle, and carefully hit it with the hammer. Then flip it and do the other side. It usually takes 2 or 3 heats to get it the way I want it.
The I set the choil area on the far edge of the anvil, with the edge down, and hit the spine with the hammer. What this does is square up the choil area.
Got to make sure the edge is centered, too. :)
I'll take a couple pictures to try to illustrate these steps.
 
ok, yeah i do it by hand about the same way you do (when im making a blade with a visible choil).

Was thinking maybe you did yours under the power hammer, ive tried it a few times but keep going back to doing it with a hand held hammer.
 
ok, yeah i do it by hand about the same way you do (when im making a blade with a visible choil).

Was thinking maybe you did yours under the power hammer, ive tried it a few times but keep going back to doing it with a hand held hammer.

Yeah, I've tried forging the bevels and choil with the air hammer, but it never worked out. Basically all I use the power hammer for is breaking down heavy stock to something I can form by hand, damascus, and tangs.

Here's a photo showing how I square up the choil area:

IMG_0304.jpg
 
Howdy folks,

Well, finally got a couple more blades forged, so now we're going to "thermal cycle" this big blade, as well as two more. The other two blades are both damascus, and I hope to be posting photos of them in the not-too-distant future. The heat treat oven is not a free energy device, so I like to do as many blades at one time as I can. I made a rack out of angle iron to hold blades in the oven, and it holds three. Of course the angle iron scales, so I got some stainless angle iron off of fleabay, but I haven't gotten around to making a rack out of it.

I used to use the forge to thermal cycle, but I wasn't getting the steel hot enough, so I kept getting alloy banding in my blades.
So, here's the way I thermal cycle now. I set the oven to run 4 cycles. First cycle is at 1600, then 1550, then 1500, then 1450. The high temperature of the first cycle serves to dissolve carbides, making sure that the carbon is moving like it should. The others refine the grain, and homogenize the structure. I take the blades out to cool after each soak at temp and check with a magnet to make sure the austenite has finished converting to something else. What it converts to depends on what alloys are in the steel.

This blade is L6, which, because of it's deep hardening nature, is kind of interesting to heat treat. One thing I noticed about L6 is, when letting it cool after the first cycle, it takes a long time (ten or fifteen minutes, sometimes) to regain magnetism. But as the cycles progress, it takes less and less time to get magnetic. This is because with each cycle, the grain size becomes smaller, and when the grain size gets smaller, the hardenability (depth to which the steel will harden) decreases.

The last cycle, I let the blades cool all the way to ambient, which makes it a normalizing cycle, then run an annealing cycle. Which goes like this: hold at 1300 for one and a half hours, cool at the rate of 50 degrees per hour to 1000 degrees, then cool to room temperature.

I hope I made all that clear. And didn't put y'all to sleep. :D If you do want something clarified, just speak up and I'll do my best.


Here's a pic of my oven:


oven.jpg



Here's a pic of the blade cooling down from the last cycle:


normalizing.jpg



Tomorrow I start grinding.
 
Very interesting and impressive for someone who knows jack diddly about forging and knife making in general!
 
First, here's a shot of the blade after annealing:

scaly.jpg



The first step (for me) is to use the small wheel with a dull belt to knock off the scale:

de-scaling.jpg



Here it is cleaned up:

cleanedup.jpg



Then I grind it to the final shape:

profiling.jpg



Next I flatten the ricasso and taper the tang so the guard will slide up to where it needs to later on.

flatteningricasso.jpg



Then I do the plunge grind:

plungegrinding.jpg



plungecut.jpg
 
Here I have already cleaned upthe flats, but it's still too thick at the edge, so next I ground a bevel which does 3 things. It establishes the final edge thickness, and it's real easy to see how much more I need to take off. This is when I make sure the edge is straight, and the bevel keeps the next new belt from getting it's grit sheared off by the sharp angle.

guidebevel.jpg



Here I am grinding the flats. Up to now, I've done all my grinding freehand, but I just bought the grinder I'm using here, and it came with a work rest,
so I decided to give it a try. I liked it. I used a push stick to apply pressure where I wanted metal removed.

flatgrinding.jpg



Here it is all rough ground.

roughground.jpg



The plunge grinds. Not too bad, and they'll get cleaned up as things go along.

shoulders.jpg




Here's a shot showing the distal taper:

showingtaper.jpg


Next I have to take the finish to 240 grit, then stamp my mark and serial number.


And, just in case any of you wonder what I look like:

me.jpg



:D
 
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