My first forged knife/annealing question.

R

R.C.Reichert

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Jul 26, 2008
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Hello. I just finished forging my first knife, (you can see my "anvil" that it's sitting on) a large bowie/camp style blade that I forged out of 5160. What do you guy's think? Anyways, I was wondering if it was necessary to anneal right away, or can I just go ahead after its cooled down from the forge and start grinding? I'll post some progress pics if anyone is interested...


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I usually normalize after forging, and with 5160 I will grind it in this state. Drilling it like this can be a bit touchy but is do-able if you have decent bits.
 
You want to normalize it. Heat it up to a bit past no magnetic and let it cool in the air till a bit after it turns black. Heat it back up till nonmagnetic and then let it cool again, then repeat that once more. This will reduce grain size and get the steel ready for HT after you grind it.
 
The only reason to anneal steel is if you're going to do heavy machining on it. The more heat cycles you put your steel through the more potential to screw up the grain. Your forging and normalizing should set up the grain structure you want. The last few forging heats should be successively cooler and less disruption taking place. i.e. only minor straightening at lower temp.
 
Here is a progress pic of the same forged blade after some rough grinding and I refined the profile. I hope you guy's like it.

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My 10th forged blade didn't look that good, I specialized in the steel banana butter knife and had to do a lot of clean up grinding because of using a hammer to bring the point back down. Then I got to forge with Jerry Fisk at Buckmasters (he was with Camillus I think) and he taught me about wooden hammers and whompin sticks! :D

A few things if I may and it's hard to tell but I'm judging this off of the belt scratches and shadows. The ricasso is the basis for most of your knife, it's usually the only square and parallel portion of a blade ESPECIALLY on a hidden tang. It's important for it to be square and flat and in the picture it looks like the lower portion is rolled towards the cutting edge on your blade. You can clean this up by either getting it flat (not sure how much material there is) bringing the plunge back a bit and bringing the bottom of the ricasso up a bit, you'll probably have to bring the spine down too :( Or just let it go like it is and be proud of your first forged blade. It's much better than most of my early knives.

I use a thick piece of marble tile as a surface/lapping plate until I can get a "real" one. Some sandpaper glued down helps to get stuff flat and parallel, use a marker on the ricasso to see where you're removing metal. Of course you can use a grinder but I don't have one anymore so that's how I do it :p

Looks great!
 
Will Leavitt said:
My 10th forged blade didn't look that good, I specialized in the steel banana butter knife and had to do a lot of clean up grinding because of using a hammer to bring the point back down. Then I got to forge with Jerry Fisk at Buckmasters (he was with Camillus I think) and he taught me about wooden hammers and whompin sticks! :D

A few things if I may and it's hard to tell but I'm judging this off of the belt scratches and shadows. The ricasso is the basis for most of your knife, it's usually the only square and parallel portion of a blade ESPECIALLY on a hidden tang. It's important for it to be square and flat and in the picture it looks like the lower portion is rolled towards the cutting edge on your blade. You can clean this up by either getting it flat (not sure how much material there is) bringing the plunge back a bit and bringing the bottom of the ricasso up a bit, you'll probably have to bring the spine down too :( Or just let it go like it is and be proud of your first forged blade. It's much better than most of my early knives.

I use a thick piece of marble tile as a surface/lapping plate until I can get a "real" one. Some sandpaper glued down helps to get stuff flat and parallel, use a marker on the ricasso to see where you're removing metal. Of course you can use a grinder but I don't have one anymore so that's how I do it :p

Looks great!
Click to expand...


Thanks for the compliments! I really appreciate them.:D Anyways, as far as the lower portion being rolled toward the edge, you are right. However, I don't really like choils very much...I actually like the way Raymod Richard does his bowies. I also like the way a lot of earlier civil war bowies were made without the choil also, but does this affect the strength of the finished blade do you think?

Here is an example of sort of what I'm after....

http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/images/wa200704A38_00.jpg
 
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