One blade melted and one broken later, my first successful knife. – Dylan Bleier

[dylanbleier]

http://imgur.com/a/Qanbk

5/32" 1084 (perhaps a bit thick; maybe next time I'll try 1/8")
maple or oak (?) handle (love the look of the grain), finished with boiled linseed oil
brass pins and T-88 structural epoxy to hold handles on

I suck at peening. Do I need a special tool or should I find softer brass or do I just need to go slower? Please help. Also, should I just try copper or even aluminum, which are both softer than brass?

This was made in a charcoal forge. My heat treat is not at all established... I still need to figure out how to make the quench reliable, and I need a way to test hardness that is better than using a standard file.

All of the steel grinding and wood shaping was done with an old 1" belt sander.
Other than that I used a hack saw, band saws, drill press, hand drill, sand paper.

Takes a shaving sharp edge pretty easily, now that I re-profiled the grind a bit.

Pretty happy with the product overall.

Working on a thin-ish leather sheath right now.

 

[ggoose]

It has a very raw, coarse appeal. Looks like you did your peening with a sledge hammer , but it adds to the aesthetic. I like!

 

[Britt_Askew]

Hey Dylan this thread shows a couple of masters peening a pin http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-How-I-dome-and-polish-pins?highlight=peening

The wood looks like maple to me , looks like you cracked it by peening to much though. Do you use any epozy between the steel and handle material? if so I dont think peening is necessary

 

[dylanbleier]

> if epoxy, peening not necessary

>>oh.jpg