Suggestion Please

J

James Liu

Joined
Aug 11, 2000
Messages
108
Hello forum,

Here's a random question about knives/swords in general. On a knife w/ a sharp point, if the point somehow becomes bent (tilting to the left/right after impact), how would one go about fixing it?

And no, this did NOT happen on any HI khukuris that I have
smile.gif


J
 
James, risking a guess here, I'd suggest you don't use wood as a target, opting for hay bales or dense foam instead. If you couldn't use the knife to pry off hubcaps then it wants a softer target. If I bent a point badly enough to risk changing the blade profile I would take it to a bladesmith to rework. Otherwise if it wasn't worth the money or effort, I'd gently tap it back and hope for the best.

Stephen

------------------
Micah 6:8. Well worth the attempt!
 
Guilty as charged... I took a large bowie knife to a soft wood tree in my backyard. This was a few years back but I never got around to asking people about how to fix it.

I think the point is not bent significantly enough to warrant a trip to the bladesmith... what type of hammer(Im assuming?) would be ideal for the tapping that you mentioned?

J
 
JL,
If you intend to cold bend the blade use a BRASS hammer. Using a steel hammer will work fine if every blow will be at right angle to the work, if not you may dent the work or cause a hard spot which would later fracture.
Dan
 
Ideally, I'd take off the hilt and furniture, heat the blade up slowly to a good cherry-red and cool it gradually, to relieve the stresses caused by the bend. Then I'd take another cherry-red heat and carefully hammer out the bend on the anvil. For choice I'd anneal it a second time before hardening, for fear of the blade warping when quenched. After hardening, for a bowie I'd heat up a 3/4" steel rod to orange heat and lay the back of the bowie on this rod until the back of the bowie turned blue, leaving the cutting edge somewhere in the straw yellow to purple range.

If you don't have a sufficient heat source, I'd suggest leaving it well alone; hammering it straight while cold, even if carefully done, will set up dangerous stresses in tempered steel, and you could ruin the whole knife. Likewise grinding; it's very easy to wreck the temper of a blade when reshaping with a grinding wheel or angle grinder, owing to the friction heat. If you can live with the bend, let it be; it's far easier to make a knife worse than better, trying to work it cold.
 
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