Once Upon A Time In WoodChuck Forge

[mohd]

This is a story about two men and how destiny caused them to work together in a knife making project. One is in the east, in a South East Asian country namely Malaysia and the other one is in the west, in a North American country namely US. The one in the east is having a dream to have a cutter/chopper in Damascus of his own designed and the one in the west is having the technology, the craftsmanship and the blacksmithing experience to make the dream of the one in the east to come true. The design of the cutter/chopper was drawn with specs and info of the needed materials and it was sent to the one in the west. After some planning and preparation then one day in December, 2010 the project was launched and the actual works got started. And it’s only supposed to finish by January, 2011. That makes the estimated time to finish the making of this cutter/chopper for about a month but in two contiguous years.

Pictures were shot during the WIP and those pictures were sent to the one in the east with permission that those pictures and the story about it can always be shared in any forms with others.

BTW, it’s me Mohd the one in the east who designed the cutter/chopper and it’s him Chuck Richards the one in the west who translated the design from a mere graphical drawing into the real thing of a cutter/chopper!

And here is the showing and the telling about the making of the cutter/chopper. And lots of thanks in advance to you all pals for all the looking, the reading and the discussion involved! Kindly take notes that all of the descriptions here are from Chuck who as the smith knows the purpose and the reason as well as the result and the impact of his each doing shown in the picture. And now the pictorial story began.

First is the stack of 1095/15N20 23 layers ready for welding up the box.

Next is the box welded up for dry welding the billet.

Dry welding? Is it the same concept of a hyperbaric welding? Why and what for it was used here? It sound interesting and it makes me real curious! Is the dry welding meant for producing a cleaner billet? Would Chuck or any knife maker kindly offer me some light about this dry welding concept and all the reasoning for doing it to the stack of 1095/15N20, pretty please!

Next getting it hot.

And the first press .

.. and end shot of the first press. You can see the sides of the can bulging out. I want this to happen as I will remove the sides after this step.

I open up the can ..

.. to show the cleanly welded layers.

The next shot is the 52100 in bulk form. I cut this from a 6.5" dia round and re-cut it into usable sizes.

Then I cut a piece of L-6 from a 2.25" round. This gives me a 2/3 -1/3 mix for the 52100/L6 mix. The L-6 is on top and ground clean. I will also grind the 52100 clean and cut and stack a 5 layer billet. Then weld it all up for the next step.

Another interesting thing for me here is about the reason behind the pairing of the steels in the mix. Why the pairing is in such a way that 1095 was paired with 15N20 while 52100 was paired with L6? Can it be done with different pairing such as 1095 is paired with 52100 and 15N20 is paired with L6 or 1095 is paired with L6 and 15N20 is paired with 52100?

BTW Chuck, is the weighing of the steels is to get the correct mix of 2/3 52100 and 1/3 L6?

First is the first stack of the full billet. The 1095, 15N20, are the 5 larger blocks. The 52100, L6 are the smaller ones. This makes up a 140 layer billet. I weld up the top to seal the whole billet to dry weld again. I will then grind off all the weldment after I have done the first weld and before I press the sides. After I clean up and draw out the billet I then cut and re-stack by 4. This gives a total layer count of 560. I then draw out once more and round off the corners.

Then I twisted the bar. I attempted to do a twist on bar at 1.5" dia but it was just to hard to do. So I drew it out to 1.25" and it worked much better. As you can see I got a pretty tight twist on it.

Drawing it out flat once more to the final bar.
That is a 24" ruler on it for scale.

Then finally the forged blade. For reference also, the white line on the front of the anvil is 12.25". Like I said in another email, I had to use every millimeter of material to get the 2.25" width you asked for. I hope to be able to do some grinding and possibly HT this week. I do have enough to do another blade if something goes wrong but I hope not to need it for this project.

Now it looks the basic shape of the blade is already there except for the notch at the ricasso. Did you hammer it all using the power hammer Chuck?

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!

mohd

 

[RogerP]

Well this is certainly shaping up to be a cool project - I'll enjoy watching it unfold. One day you'll shock us all and commission a small little hunter. I'm just pulling you chain - I like the big knives too.

Roger

 

[peterinct]

Looking GREAT so far. Hope to see more soon

I love these threads!

Peter

 

[Bruce Bump]

Wonderful story. I cant wait to see more. The tight twist of combo steels is going to be interesting. Hurry.

 

[Mike Turner]

I am with Bruce, I enjoyed the story and can not wait to see more.

 

[A C Richards]

Well I ground the blade on New Years Day and I had to remove too much material to get out all the hammer dings. I was worried about trying to squeeze too much out of the billet. I will have to forge another billet and try to twist a larger diameter. I think it is time to make a twisting machine. I tried to twist the 1.75" billet and it was just too hard to do. SO I forged it down to 1.25". Then when I tried to forge the blade I did not have quite enough to allow for grinding. Oh well such is life. Oh I had enough of the original billet to fold it over and try again but the weld did not take properly. Back to the drawing board or should I say press.

 

[Mike Turner]

Well that is a bummer Chuck but nothing like a practice run

 

[A C Richards]

Yea, you would think I'd learn. It seems I do a dry run on new styles every time. I need to start doing a practice blade out of plain carbon steel first. Oh well the blade is still good just not within specs. I will finish it out and put it in inventory. It will have a couple modifications though.

 

[Mike Turner]

Nice thing about big blades gone bad is the make great smaller blades .

 

[A C Richards]

THe remaining billet will make a few really nice smaller knives. I hope it works out anyway. I will see if the weld flaw is too deep or what.

 

[deker]

Well I ground the blade on New Years Day and I had to remove too much material to get out all the hammer dings. I was worried about trying to squeeze too much out of the billet. I will have to forge another billet and try to twist a larger diameter. I think it is time to make a twisting machine. I tried to twist the 1.75" billet and it was just too hard to do. SO I forged it down to 1.25". Then when I tried to forge the blade I did not have quite enough to allow for grinding. Oh well such is life. Oh I had enough of the original billet to fold it over and try again but the weld did not take properly. Back to the drawing board or should I say press.

That's a bummer Chuck! Big twist stuff is always a challenge. I've done 1.5" square twists a couple times, but it took more than just me to do the twisting. I used a large pipe wrench with a piece of 1 1/4" black pipe welded to the top jaw. Then one of us got on each end of the wrench and traded pushing and pulling to get the twist done. Get a buddy to give you a hand, it's fun to do once or twice...then it's time for a twisting machine

-d

 

[A C Richards]

Yea, I got the big pipe wrench now if I can swing the help. I actually have a volunteer who might be able to come up this weekend. I just need to get the billet ready in the next 2 days. If not I may just have to go find someone who will help. I do have a gear reducer but it is only 25:1 so I would need to do an intermediate reduction. Not enough time for this project. I may incorporate the twist machine into a rolling mill. Have to think about this for a while.

 

[Wulf]

My wife knew an old blacksmith who made a simple but powerful twisting machine out of an old elevator motor/ pulley system. Not sure where you can get some of those but it's a neat idea and apparently it worked great.

 

[A C Richards]

Well it looks like Mike Turner has graciously volunteered to come up and help me twist up this billet. i will keep the tread updated as we progress. I will be putting together another billet today and made a larger twisting jig yesterday. It should be a lot of fun. Looking forward to it.

 

[mohd]

Well I ground the blade on New Years Day and I had to remove too much material to get out all the hammer dings. I was worried about trying to squeeze too much out of the billet. I will have to forge another billet and try to twist a larger diameter. I think it is time to make a twisting machine. I tried to twist the 1.75" billet and it was just too hard to do. SO I forged it down to 1.25". Then when I tried to forge the blade I did not have quite enough to allow for grinding. Oh well such is life. Oh I had enough of the original billet to fold it over and try again but the weld did not take properly. Back to the drawing board or should I say press.

I know that it's not easy to build a new design knife according to the requested specs, Chuck! A knifemaker friend once confessed to me in his email that he faced few failures in building a new design knife before he finally came out with a good piece!

.. are very difficult to make, and as of yet, I have had at least 4 failures for every knife finished ..

That's why I always highly treasure a custom handmade knife because I'm always aware that behind each knife means a lot of things and happenings in the knifemaker's life himself while building the knife.

Hope the redo will be a big success, Chuck

mohd

 

[A C Richards]

Well Mike came up last weekend and we did the billet. I made up a new billet. This one is a 2"dia. The last one was right about 1.25".
Here it is on the hammer for a final shaping.

Here is a shot of Mike getting into the twist

We found that the rosebud did not do the job so it was back into the forge. Mike putting some more twist on the billet.

Here is a shot of the final billet.

This billet ended up being 516 layers. I will be using the best chunk out of the full billet for the blade. This is the portion of the billet forged out into a bar. 15"long, 2.5 wide and .5 thick. Plenty to do the blade easily.

I will be forging the blade out a bit later on in the week. I will post as I progress.

Thanks for looking.

 

[mohd]

Lots of lots of thanks for the update, Chuck!

Well Mike came up last weekend and we did the billet.

Lots of thanks Mike! Your helping Chuck made you as part of the project team! And now small part of your life was already infused in the spirit of the blade forever

This billet ended up being 516 layers. I will be using the best chunk out of the full billet for the blade. This is the portion of the billet forged out into a bar. 15"long, 2.5 wide and .5 thick. Plenty to do the blade easily.

Sounds great to me :thumbup:

I will be forging the blade out a bit later on in the week. I will post as I progress.

Looking forward for it

BTW ..

One day you'll shock us all and commission a small little hunter.

That's the plan Roger, that's the plan

mohd

 

[A C Richards]

So here's what's been happening the past couple of weeks.

First Here is the new blade I forged to replace the one that was too small.

Then a VERY Rough grind. I had to see what the pattern looked like. I ground it to 200 grit and did a light etch.

You can make out the 52100/L6 layers as a brighter stripe. The 1095/15n20 are the lighter layers. As mentioned this was sanded to 200 grit. once I put a proper polish on this the pattern will really pop.

and here is the finish grind before heat treat just finished today.

sorry for the crappy picture. Just had to take a quick snap.

The bottom blade is the new one while the top one is the old blade. The new one is a bit larger and thicker than the first one. This is why I had to make a new one.

Now I need to Heat Treat these on Wednesday. I will update when I get them ready to put together.

Thanks for looking again

 

[Mike Turner]

Looking good Chuck now get back to work .


edited to add:

Mohd sorry missed your post, I am glad I could help a friend out and honored to be a very small part of the project.

 

[RogerP]

Impressive tag-team twist, guys. :thumbup:

Roger