Shop Talk Q4 - Build Challenge - Kephart Knife

Gawd I literally want to fight those bastards. Had calipers on the knife and showed 2 measurements. 🤨 I swear in the pics it looks like the front of the blade at the spear point is wider than the middle. Could be from sharpening but regardless. Why is getting measurements on a 200yr old knife that's literally in a museum so hard.
 
Did this yesterday to have some fun, quick and dirty start of the Kephart

1 - started wider to have enough material for the guard
2 - isolated guard with a piece of round bar
3 - forged the rest down to wanted width

V57kaBq.png


I will continue in next few days.
 
The Kephart can be deceptively simple and complex at the same time.
I attended a show about six weeks ago and had a pretty broad range of knife styles on hand. By far, the Kephart garnered more interest (and many custom orders), than any of my other blades offered that day.
It almost has a cult following (in a good way).
 
Daado said:
Did this yesterday to have some fun, quick and dirty start of the Kephart

1 - started wider to have enough material for the guard
2 - isolated guard with a piece of round bar
3 - forged the rest down to wanted width

V57kaBq.png


I will continue in next few days.
Click to expand...
Really looking forward to the forged builds. What steel are you using?
 
I've got a 3/4 round 1085 I think will be fun to beat on for this. If I swing my hammer right hopefully the spear point will roll right out of the front. Perhaps a bit of fishlip to rasp but we shall see.
 
Daado said:
Did this yesterday to have some fun, quick and dirty start of the Kephart

1 - started wider to have enough material for the guard
2 - isolated guard with a piece of round bar
3 - forged the rest down to wanted width

V57kaBq.png


I will continue in next few days.
Click to expand...
My blacksmithing skills for now are just right to straighten ball bearing race ... :( One day . .. ..
The drawing is not good, I drew it from memory :) Now it is 5mm thick , I will harden that piece and after that I can think how to make that knife .One thing is sure.................... I will grind a few facet and then convex it all :) I have some file which I am 100 % sure that they are older then 70 years , but they are 29mm wide .It would be cool to make this knife from one of them.....But I can t forge !!
tTIobAw.jpg

pH7aBo9.jpg
 
Joseph Bandeko said:
I wanna see somebody make a full tang integral Kephart...
Click to expand...
Prolly need to start with 1 1/4 round for that. Especially if you wanted to make the integral that cool little pinch bump at the front of the grip. And have a forging press. No way my old shoulders are gonna beat on that. Maybe I could bribe my nephew with beer to be my striker. Or finally turn my old 25t log splitter into a press. Prolly none of the above though lol. There's beer to be drank, football, and fires to be watched
 
Got a rough shape cut out yesterday to play with a bit. I am going for a 4" edge model and having to use some creative license since I only have 3/32 steel on hand and will be using Osage; but I think it will still be an appropriate tribute. I cant get the attachments to play nice at the moment but will upload some photos later on.
 
12345678910 said:
I think pdf's are available, archive.org and others
Click to expand...
Do you have link to that ? I don t see point to make this knife without exact dimension , especially for blade . I want to see how that famous Kephart perform with that blade geometry , not just to make knife which look like it . . . . .
 
Natlek said:
Do you have link to that ? I don t see point to make this knife without exact dimension , especially for blade . I want to see how that famous Kephart perform with that blade geometry , not just to make knife which look like it . . . . .
Click to expand...
I meant to his book.






His description is very simple, one inch blade, eighth inch spine, four and half inches long ?
That's from memory

The other thread Stacy linked to had photos on grid graph paper of the historical

Print that out, go to a photo copy shop and scale the photo to one of the known dimensions.
 
Last edited:
Natlek said:
Do you have link to that ? I don t see point to make this knife without exact dimension , especially for blade . I want to see how that famous Kephart perform with that blade geometry , not just to make knife which look like it . . . . .
Click to expand...
I think that the nearest we can get dimensionaly to the old Kephart is from the man who has actually handled the knife, Becker and his Kephart reproduction. I have not seen one but from looking at images his production version features the distal taper in the handle, but I cant find an image that shows if there is a distal taper in the blade, I suggest that it is this feature above all others that, in Ethan Beckers words, makes the knife "want to cut". In a chat one night with Mors Khochanski we talked about knives and he suggested that the continuous curve of the blade edge was very important for cutting. In hindsight, it seems that a continuous curve performs a similar function to a distal taper on a blade with a straight edge.
 
Working from the description in the article and the first photo I made a pair using CPM 3V in Feb 2021.
The feature that the article stressed as important and is missing in many reproductions is the flare in the handle slabs.
I added a swedge for fun and added drilling capability. The blade is 4.75" to the handle.
S2H2GLr.png

CMfzzmR.jpg

5SNvvNJ.jpg

Z7VDa5A.jpg
 
I adjusted the basic shape a bit to more my preference....4-1/2" on the handle length, 5" on the blade. It seems like a very gentle palm swell makes sense on this design?
Also, forgot I had some of this crazy lookin carbon fiber reinforced PEEK. Might as well try it out on this knife.
Cp64tjgh.jpg
FRkCw9Rh.jpg
 
Attachments are working again for me. Rough cut out and profiled. I want to play with this shape a bit to find out what works and what wont (I will prob have to make a few to get this right - lol)

20231101_142143.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top