Scandi influenced blade WIP

quint

quint

Joined
Nov 29, 2011
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So I figured it was time I did a little work in progress not to mention the gentleman I am making this for wanted in progress photos so it turned out to be a good time to put them together. So I wanted to mention that I was a little leery about doing a WIP just due to the fact that most of my knife making I have learned here on the forums, other forums, some books, pestering various experience makers, and simple trial and error with a little practice thrown in. Basically I am sure most of you have scene all this before but maybe it will help out a few and give others a chance to let me know how screwed up I am (or should I say areas I could work on).

Disclaimer- I did the best I could with the photos, using a D40 with the kit lense and a $10 tripod I picked up at a garage sale. Plus I dont know much about
photography, one can only have so many hobbies :(
Starting with the tools I will be using to forge the blade out.

-Homebuilt forge from a propane tank. Pretty straight forward, lined with a 2" layer of kaowool type stuff, castable refractory, coated with itc100. She just got a new floor as well.
-200lb Soderfors anvil
-various hammers ( I like to change my hammers around depending on what I am doing).
-Fuller tool, made this by using W1 drill rod bent heat treated and brought back to a spring temper thru the bend. Welded that to a square piece of steel.
Next one Ill use a little larger diameter rod but it works pretty good. Slide the knife in sideways, tilt it up into position and whack away.
-Cutoff hardy



Warming up the forge, it takes a little while with the castable and the fire bricks in the floor. They suck up alot of heat at first but after they are warmed up this thing takes right off. For forging it will hold a nice 2000F and I can pretty easily bump it up to 2350F for forge welding (still learning that one). The burner is really nice but they are pricey.



Warming up the bar of 80CRV2 in preparation for forging. The bar is 1/4" thick by 1.25" wide. Gonna be forging it down to about 3/16" thick by about 1" wide at its widest.



First course of action I am shaping the general shape of the blade. I will refine this after I forge the tang out. My word of advice for beginner bladesmith's is dress your hammers. It makes a world of difference. A almost flat center, every so slightly crowned surface and round corners. I couldnt believe the difference in my forging after I figured out the proper way to dress my hammers. It helped get rid of probably 80% of my hammer marks.



Next I want to establish the tang or trim the stock. I decided this time to trim off the piece so the hot cutter went into the hardy. I cut on edge because it works for me. Once you get it started it slices right thru with a handful of hammer blows.



Then establishing the tang junction. In sideways, flip it on edge and give it a few taps of the hammer. Trial and error to learn how to judge how much you will need. I was in the process of making several hidden tang knives so Ive got a decent idea. Plus if you do to much just trim it off. The biggest part is establishing the blade length so you dont come up short on that end.





Now draw out the tang to your desired thickness and width. More is better IMHO but it can vary I imagine.





More to follow.
 
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Finished up the forging today. So I dont have a flatter. Well after thinking of making one a while back I had a thought (the rare and elusive .....:D), so I grabbed a chunk of railroad track I had been using and tried that. It works surprisingly well. I tamp down the blade with it then usually only a minor adjustment here and there with the hammer and they come out flat as can be.





The finished product with a few others I am working on.



As far as blade shape I am going off the center drawing which I made up as a rough idea. It is based off the NL5 blade shape.



That is it for today. Gonna hopefully get it finish profiled, ground and heat treated this weekend or later today. We shall see.

Tools I will be using for that.
My NWG which started out all pretty, primered and painted black. Then I got a little welder and well it went from there. Far uglier now but has a nice stand and tracks great now. Plus takes up less space which is nice. Yes I know DONT leave your switch un covered. I recently did alot of this and tied it up and forgot to mount it properly. Will be doing that today.


Ordered 2 120mm ammo cans. These things are great. Each holds about 7.5gal of oil with an air tight lid. Made a little wood stand so I can wheel them outside during quench time.



I ended up rearranging my garage to make more efficient room for my equipment. Always a battle. Well after I was done I didnt have anywhere to put my belts. So figured a tree stand would work. Its two 2x4s screwed together about 6' tall. square base, has 2 boards screwed to the center post at 3' and the top. This creates 8 hangers for my belts. As an after thought I taped some little L shaped guys to prevent the belts from sliding off.




Thanks for looking. Questions or comments welcome. Looking forward to progressing with this project. I will update this thread with more work completed as soon as I can barring any mishaps.
 
Wanted to add one detail about the forging and would like others feed back on this. Since this will be a scandi grind I decided to not forge the bevels in. Every other style I would since I prefer to grind as little as possible. However this having to have such a precise bevel I decided that it was best left up to the grinder.

Do you guys do the same or do you forge in the bevels for this type of grind?
 
So far awesome WIP! Thanks Quint. Do your neighbors look at you like your crazy when you are hammering away?
 
Mccandmatt it depends on the neighbor lol. Some of the houses are empty for various reasons, my old retired neighbor just tells me to hit it like I mean it. I keep the forging work to decent hours and what not.
 
As a generally stock removal guy who has only recently been dabbling into forging, the pictures were a great help. Looks like you have my anvil's big brother... I picked up a 149lb Soderfors a few months back, loving it.

Probably going to be stealing some of your ideas. I was going to be building something for belt storage next week, as they're taking up far too much of my precious wall space... so I might have to do something similar. Seems simple and effective. Also may be stealing that ammo quench tank :P

Thanks for posting! Looking forward to the rest.
 
That stand took me probably all of 20min to build. I didnt measure or anything besides the height. Really simple. At the time I had thought of getting one of those round fence post so you could build it to rotate. I just didnt want to spend any money on it so used left over fencing material I had on hand and just wanted to do a quick build so I could get back to work. Could definitely make it far nicer I am sure.
 
Didnt get as far as I had wanted today but did make some progress.

Basically the next few steps arent anything new to someone with a grinder and or hand tools. Being a scandi style it helps in some aspects because your losing the plunge line (unless you wanna keep it). I am not the best with the grinder or should I say very good. Getting there but it takes practice. I can tell you what helps me and that is body motion and muscle memory. Kind of like shooting a bow if you will. Once you are able to establish a comfortable repeatable draw and release that you can repeat over and over again regardless of your surroundings, it becomes second nature and allows you to concentrate more on the target and other factors.

I like to scribe my line, I use a flat surface and a drill bit about the max thickness of the blade. If you want a wider line then go with a smaller drill bit, or just go up scale and make one of those dandy center scribes.



A few other guys suggested this (sorry horrible with remembering names) and I know Fred Rowe is one who goes over it in his grinding videos. Little plug for the bubble jig, that thing did wonders for me when I first started. Dont use it as much any more but wow it helped alot. Anyways I do a shallow grind at first. Get up close about .03" or so and make sure your center line on your grind. This is the easiest place to make adjustments and fix things (IMHO). Once you have established this short grind and are happy with what will be your edge line then proceed to basically walk up the side of the blade. Ill usually do about a third, flip it and do the other side and vise versa till I am where I want to be with the grind and am equal on both sides.





Now once done it always seems like I will have a shallow peak or valley somewhere. This is where you want to use the disk grinder which makes it much faster. I opted to use some files and then a sanding block. Plus get to show off my knife vises that I picked up from watching Nicks WIP. Mine are obviously not as nice. The first is the flat one which is 1/8" stock tapered and then drilled and tapped. I also welded this into a T with an additional 1/8" thick by 1" piece underneath. This is for rigidity and to be held in the bench vise.

The second one is for holding the blade for handles. Unlike Nicks I dont have a pipe vise so I just used the square stock and welded some strips to it to tighten up in the vise. Welded some strips on the back to prevent the wood from sliding out but could still slide up to a 2" knife threw. They are both ugly but work pretty good.





File powdered and ready to go to work



Various sanding blocks Ive made.


Blade filed and quick 180grit hand sand



One of my favorite tools. Time to cut the shoulders in. A file guide is such a time saver and makes this job so very easy when working by hand.




Now she is pretty much ready for thermal cycling and quench. Hopefully this weekend.

 
Never could have guessed what some of those forging tools were for before the pics. :)

I'm reasonably familiar with stock removal tools and what not, but forging is voodoo. Super cool forge and anvil.

What's the powder on the file, and what does it do? Also, I've been thinking about making a tank forge. How do you know (positively) that it's empty before cutting into it, and did you leave any of the bell shaped steel at the top, or did you cut the whole top off?

Thanks very much for all the pics and explanation. Pics look good with whatever editing filters you're using.
 
Thanks Strigamort. I know how ya feel, when I first started forging I was like how the heck do you do that and whats that .....

The powder in this case is gold bond but any baby powder will work, helps somewhat to keep the file from filling up as quickly. I never new about it and some mention of it on the forums so I tried it out. Seems to work pretty good so I try and remember to do it now.

The forge this time I actually got it new. If you get a old one you gotta take the fill fitting off of it and clean it out and ensure with out a doubt there is nothing in it. I think there are various methods you would have to look up but yeah its a big safety thing. At the time I just wanted to get to building one and figured I was still saving money even if I bought it new.

Anyways first I cut the front off. I cut a small hole in the back to push blades thru that are too large for the forge body. I dont have it on mine but a good idea is to drill a small hole for your thermocouple. Mine I can just put in thru the back hole and it goes right inside my muffler. Ill take a pic when I do the heat treat.

After I started using it I just had bricks in front, then I decided I wanted the front cap back on but it is just to hard to fill the inside with it on there. So I put a hinge on one side and wire it shut on the other. Kind of ghetto but it works. Then I close up the rest as necessary.

I am just using irfanview, I dont know squat about editing really so I just play with some of the auto adjustments. It works ok. The program is free so that helps as well.
 
This is how it looked for the most recent overhaul. Originally I had two standard venturi burners in it. They worked ok but were always seeming to fight each other. I ended up getting just one of the hybrid burners (the 1" forge and foundary one). It works pretty darn great. That is why the forge has two holes in it. Anyways I used some stainless wire here and there to add support for the wool liner. Its not kaowool but very similar property wise.



All covered up with refractory.



And how I originally ran it before I put the front back on and welded in my little tray and added the fire bricks for the floor.



I like how I have it set up now. Think I will leave it like that. One of these days I would like to build a pid controlled forced air forge. Just gotta get the money and a few more parts to do it, oh and the time.
 
Thanks for the pics, that helps a lot. If you don't mind one more question, what do you use for a muffler? I think I'd like to add one to mine but my forge is only about 2.5"x8" or so.

Looking forward to seeing the ht pics. :)
 
Sorry no pics today, had a crazy weekend then spilled stew on my laptop so spent all after noon transferring parts and what not to a old one my wife had. Not as much fun as it sounds. I did get it HT and tempered, got one more cycle. Came out at 65.5HRC from what I could read. Just about right for this stuff I believe. Gonna temper it back to around 60-61.

To answer your question for the muffler I use right now a 2" square steel tube about the length of my forge. It buts up nicely against the back opening so I can either run the thermocouple into it and or run a blade thru the opening if I ever had to.
 
Not alot to show today but did get a few things done or started over the past couple of days.

HT in action, Probably going to go with a thicker muffler. As it is I end up cycling my forge to help maintain temp and I think a thicker piece of steel would help a little with that. Or just build a forced air pid controlled one. Although I have been looking at what it would take to build a Ht oven. May try that out in the near future. Once I go back to work and actually start making some money.


Normalizing (one of the few steps)


Random shot of forge welding a few layers of 1075 without flux. Turned out succesful and far less messy.


End of the forging day. :(


took it to the grinder and knocked off the decarb. Now its time to do some honing. this is going to take a little while. I start with my rough side of the stone then once that is done Ill switch to the fine side and then the strop. Already starting to slice pretty good at 220grit.





Hopefully in the next day or two Ill finish the honing and get to start working on the handle. Gotta finalize the details on that then get to work.

Thanks for looking.
 
Looking good .. That should turn out really nice. I have the same or maybe smaller burner. The thing is a beast.
 
Thank you for posting the WIP. Very interesting.
 
I'm really enjoying this, thanks!

One small thing- when cutting on a hardy, rather than cutting through from one edge to the other, the easiest method is to use a hammer blow to mark the flat side, check it, lay it back in the groove, tip it to edge, hit it, roll it to the other edge, hit it, then finally roll it so the second flat is on the hardy and hit it. Takes less time to do than to describe. (you actually usually will use a couple blows on each position)
The reason for this is that you get a much more accurate, cleaner cut with little to no distortion. If you break it off just as it loses its color you did it right, since steel shears or breaks beautifully at black heat.

If you pound the cut through from one edge to the other, you upset where the hammer hits, and it's really easy to get a cut that wanders a bit, plus the hardy has to wedge its way through the work piece, which is more work.
 
Thanks, I didnt think about the rocking back and forth. I originally tried cutting on the side but always lost the cut line basically it was harder to line back up. With the rocking I can see it working alot easier.
 
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