Wire cable and stag Bowie

H

Hmathews

Joined
Feb 22, 2005
Messages
1,004
This is my first shot at making damascus from cable. A guy, I thought was a friend, gave me a piece of 1 1/4 inch cable about a foot long and I thought why not? I wasn't sure how it was going to harden up in the heat treating process so I added a little viagra to the borax I used for flux. I pointed the horn of my anvil at the nearest suspected virgin, spit over my left shoulder, stood on my right foot and hopped around in a circle and laid the hammer on the cable. Two hours later I was checking the difference in price between a power hammer and a hydraulic press. Seriously it did take a little while, but wasn't bad at all, and I had no problems with the heat treating. :D The knife has a 6.5 inch blade 1/8 inch thick, a nickel silver guard and Axis stag handle. Overall length of 11 inches. This one will be making the trip to the Blade Show with us.


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sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes a few words is worth many more. Now this here post has lots of value all around:thumbup:
Harry, somethin tells me you'd be a fun guy to be around!
 
Lorien, I'm having fun making knives. I look forward to going to the shop every morning and hate to leave every afternoon.

While I have an idea how much work goes into some of the masterpieces you see on these forums, sometimes you need to do one that is out of your box and be willing to throw it away if it doesn't work out. I really enjoyed doing this one. It turned out better than I ever thought it would. It was a lot of work, but it was a type of damascus that can be done without much trouble with just a forge, hammer and an anvil which is all I have. I wanted to make a piece of damascus. When I felt that cable tightening up under the hammer, I wanted it to be a knife. Now I can really see the advantage of having a power hammer or press. I didn't have the same appreciation before for what those guys, that do this every day, go through as I do now.

I try to have a good time doing this, don't mind poking fun at myself and don't mind others poking fun at me either. When it stops being something I enjoy, I'll take up golf...
well, maybe not.
 
The blade was forged and cleaned up on the grinder. I ended up using about half of the billet and then losing part of that when I decided to make it a hidden tang. I guess you can see it better on the blade than the picture shows, but the wire pattern starts leaning forward, as you get closer to the point, till it is almost horizontal. That is from drawing it out.
I really wasn't thinking too much about what the wire pattern was going to look like. I just wanted to get the welds done and would have bet it wasn't going to work.
 
Cable is definitely fun and an easier damascus to do by hand, as I've done a fair bit of it myself. I like working with cable. =]

Beau Erwin
 
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