Sometimes it's a drag... forged knife from harrow tooth

Jason Fry

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Messages
3,159
About five years ago, just a little way into my knifemaking journey, I was in a stage where I was scrounging materials from all over. One of the things I came home with was a drag harrow tooth from my great-grandfather's farm near Spicewood, TX. It was too large for the capability of my forge at the time, so it sat on my workbench waiting on a "round tuit." Last July, I built a forge that could handle it. Last November, at a Big Country Knife Club hammer in, I finally forged the blade. Now that we're into March, I finally have the blade finished out. I figured with the rustic background of the steel, I should go with a complete rustic theme, and since it was family steel, I'd use family wood. We had our hardwood floors in our house refinished in January, and this material is some of the red oak floor boards. They were stamped on the backs as harvested in 1955 and milled in Gilmer, TX. A wrought iron guard, fluted ferrule, and fileworked finial finish out the package. This knife was built takedown, but is now glued. The right hand sheath is tooled with an oak leaf theme, to match the traditional "vibe" and the handle material. The steel is unknown, but tests at RC 59. The knife has a 600 grit hand finish and a convexed edge grind. Oal is 10 1/2" with a 5 3/8" blade. The blade is about 1/8" thick at the ricasso, with distal taper. I was really hoping I could put this one in the hands of Fisk and Rhea at a get together we were having, but it got rained out. As it turns out, the event host bought the knife, so they'll get to see it anyhow :)

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Mark side

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Back side
 
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:thumbup: I love knives with a story.......especially nice knives. Great profile.:thumbup:

Darcy:)
 
Love the story as well as the knife. I'm not a collector but might have been tempted to hang onto this one with the connection behind it.

Thanks for sharing.

Gary
 
Very nice story and I liked the where you got all the materials from, cool size knife. Excuse my lack of knowledge, but what is a harrows tooth? I am assuming some kind of tool.
 
It's sort of like this...
http://www.equipmentbarn.net/14-ft.-tractor-3-point-spike-tooth-drag-harrow.html

Basically it's a tool that you drag behind a tractor to aerate soil. It was used for coastal Bermuda in our case. The teeth on the one we had were replaceable, and looked kind of like miniature railroad spikes, with a diamond cross section. One whole arm had broken off, and that's the part I took. The frame was mid-carbon, and the tooth sparked good.

I seriously thought about keeping this one, for sure. As it is, it went to a friend and I got a good price.
 
Great project and great story behind it. Glad to know I can use wrought iron also? At a rc 59 now way to take our old implements and create a knife through stock removal, guess I better learn how to forge quickly.
 
that is some awesome work, well done!
 
I hope we can to camp before long anyway Jason. I wanna see that knife. Looks great in the picture!
 
Great job! I've beat on a few of those and still have a sackful of well used ones.....very nice. :)
 
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