Work in Progress, Hanger Bowie

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Kyle Royer

Kyle Royer

Joined
Dec 6, 2006
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1,109
Hello Everyone,

Sorry I haven't been on the forums much for a while. I've been busy lately purchasing my first home and getting my shop all moved in and set up. I had to run all new wiring in the shop, hang drywall and get everything moved in and set up. Tell and me again, why does my surface grinder weigh 2,500 pounds? :P With the help of my family I was able to get the shop fixed up, set up and operational.

In this thread I will be sharing the progress of the first knife I'm making in my new shop. It's going to be a hanger bowie with lots of clam shell themed pieces. The blade will be West Texas Wind pattern and the fittings will be stainless steel with some of my own engraving. The handle will be amber Sambar Stag with some 14k gold pins. The knife is for a fellow forum member who many of you know. Before I go any further I would like to thank this collector for giving my the opportunity to make this knife and for helping me do what I love for a living. Without you guys out there supporting me I couldn't do something I love doing, every day, all day long.

The idea for the hanger guard came from the collector. We've corresponded quite a bit through e-mail working out all the fine details that this knife will have. The finished drawing we came up with and the plan for this knife I believe will look really, really nice when it's all done. This will be my first hanger guard I've made.

I'll be posting pictures in large batches every few days or until I've taken about 50 new pics to post. I hope you all enjoy and fell free to ask if you have any questions about anything or if there is anything extra special you would like a shot of in my shop or on the knife.

To start out I'll show a few pictures of my house and shop. Please excuse the mess in the shop, I'm still trying to find new homes for a lot of my shop stuff.
1 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

3 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

084 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

84.5 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

85 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

86 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

087 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

87 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

87 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

88 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

89 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

I was using dad's metal table in my old shop, so until I build myself one for welding on and such I'll just weld the vise to my anvil. There's plenty of room on it. :)
90 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

091 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

With my new shop setup I can move the forge outside when I'm using it instead of having it inside like before, heating my shop up to 110 in the summer. I'm really liking this.
093 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

The welder I used before I moved out was an awesome MIG welder that my dad owned, he's keeping that but he gave me the old stick welder I grew up using. It's not nearly as sweet to weld with but it'll get the job done, no problem. :D
094 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr
 
Now for the knife part of this WIP.

Here is the finished sketch of the knife I'll be making.
095 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

096 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

097 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Now for the steel. I just purchased about 400 lbs of steel from Aldo so I'm set for this project and a few more after it.... I'll be using 6" x 1.5" x 0.065" 15N20 and 6" x 1.5" x 0.140" 1084.
098 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

099 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

100 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

101 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

102 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Here are the pieces ready to be tack welded together.
103 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Tack welded and given a handle, ready for my kerosene pre-soak to help make the welds cleaner and to make the billet wet so the borax will stick to it before I place it in the forge.
104 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Leave it in there for about a minute.
105 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

The forge is at temp and ready to go.
107 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

The billet is now one piece, welded in the forge and under the power of my press. I've just ground off all the tack welds now that the billet is forge welded. Don't want the metal that the welding rod is made of ending up in the finished blade.
108 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Drawn out ready to be ground clean and ready to be cut in half to double the layers.
109 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Cleaned the facing surface on each piece and tack welded them together, ready for the forge.
110 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr


Here's the billet with double the layers, it's been drawn out ready for the process to be repeated a couple times. I went from 29 to 58 to 116 to 232 to 464 layers in the finished billet.
111 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Here's a pic of the billet with borax all over it right before I place it in the forge.
112 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

With the billet forged to a little over 5/8" thick and with 464 layers we're now almost ready to press in the West Texas Wind Ladder Pattern with the dies on the right. I have them angled to mach the angle of the blade bevels, that way I'll be pressing in the pattern closer to the final blade bevel shape. This will make the pattern more crisp and clean at the cutting edge and not all washed out looking. I mach the angle of the dies in my billet as well so it will all press in at the same rate and depth.
113 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Here you can see the angle of the dies better and you can see the spacer to the left of the dies that keeps me from pressing the pattern in too far.
114 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Time to start on the billet. I go only one ladder rung at a time and re-heat the billet after each rung.
115 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Here is the laddered billet.
116 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Next you have to grind all the ladder rungs off to reveal the ladders that you just upset.
117 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Next I forged in the tang, refined the blade shape on the anvil, then with a grinder and I also surface ground it. I'm shooting for a ricasso thickness of somewhere right around 0.250". It's at 0.255 right now so when the knife is done it will be about 0.240" to 0.245" thick. :)
118 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

119 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

After some grinding on the blade bevels I do a quick etch to see what the pattern looks like. It's just how I waned it to look, I'm very happy. :D
120 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

121 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Next I ran it through three normalizing stages, 1,600 degrees, 1,500 degrees and then 1,400 degrees.
122 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Next up, prepping for hardening stages. I spilled some of my Parks 50 on the floor while filling my quench tank, no problem, just sprinkle a little oil dry on the mess and make an even bigger mess of stuff that looks like cat litter all over. :P
130 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

The knife is at temp and my oil is ready to go after being heated to about 100 degrees.
131 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Take a look inside, almost ready......
132 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Yes, the blade is hardened. Nice and hard indeed. The tip area warped a little but not bad at all. I can fix it up in the final grinding I do later.
133 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

Cleaned the blade up a bit.
134 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

And in the oven for tempering. I'll keep it in there for two hours and we'll be ready to do the final grinding.
135 by Kyle Royer, on Flickr

That's all for today, keep your eye out for the next installment in a couple days. I hope you all have had a great day and thanks for checking this out. I better get back out to the shop now. See you later.
 
Beautiful house and property. Looks like a great place to get some work done. Congratulations.
 
Kyle huge congrats on the move. Its incredible how successful you are at your age doing what you love. I haven't spoken to anyone about this project but after seeing the pictures and reading that your using AMBER stag I am going to bet its for Kevin! I could be wrong though of course.. But aside from the stag the handle matches his old design.
 
Okay..so there's a few things I can be ignorant about and the " Hanger Bowie" term is one of them...so can someone fill in the blanks as to origin and purpose or as much as one knows........I Google the term and only see images of David Bowie and bowie knives....



And congrats on the first house................
 
Congratulations Kyle. What a fine set-up for a young knifemaker.
Nice house, large shop with endless possibilities, nice large and peaceful property.
You have a lot to be proud of.

By the way, love that Blade shape.
 
jonathan brand said:
Kyle huge congrats on the move. Its incredible how successful you are at your age doing what you love. I haven't spoken to anyone about this project but after seeing the pictures and reading that your using AMBER stag I am going to bet its for Kevin! I could be wrong though of course.. But aside from the stag the handle matches his old design.
Click to expand...

You got a chuckle out of me Jon.
We know one another's taste and style of knives because ours is so similar.
 
Boggs said:
Okay..so there's a few things I can be ignorant about and the " Hanger Bowie" term is one of them...so can someone fill in the blanks as to origin and purpose or as much as one knows........I Google the term and only see images of David Bowie and bowie knives....

And congrats on the first house................
Click to expand...

Hello Boggs.
"Hangers" were most commonly used on European Short Hunting Swords as methods for 'hanging' their swords on objects and for addition hand protection.
They also tended to be very decorative additions to the gentleman's sword as these weapons were status symbols in the day. Hangers appeared on some larger Bowies more as decorative/design elements. You can find examples in some of the antique bowie books.





 
Wow, Kyle! Caleb mentioned you were moving. What a nice place you found! Look at all of that shop space!

Congratulations on the move. Looking forward to this WIP. You should have a lot of high spirits going into this one. :)

Good for you. :thumbup:

- Joe
 
Kyle, you spent a ton of time creating this WIP. I'm appreciating every explanation, however, I admit I don't understand it all.

Nor do I need to. I'm happy to thumb through the images to get a clear understanding of the outcome. :D

Coop
 
Kyle,

Congratulations on your new place.
I'm sure we'll see many amazing pieces come out of your new shop for yrs to come.

Tad
 
Kyle,

I think that may be the most awesome anvil I've ever seen. Who makes it or where did you find it?
 
Kyle, Nice place and all that shop space. :thumbup: Are those oak trees providing nice shade as well?



Thanks for taking us along for the ride pal.

Bing
 
Congratulations on your home and growth.
Great WIP. I'm in the same boat as Coop, though less knowledgable than he.
My Best,
Dozier
(In South La with rain and lots of winged insects)
 
nice review of the process and nice to see you have a great new home and workshop Kyle. Looking forward to seeing the final result which I'm sure Kevin will enjoy.
 
Congratulations Kyle!! Great looking place there brother and that shop is PERFECT! The possibilities are just endless with that much space :) It's always a true pleasure to tune in for your WIPs...thanks for taking the time to let us see your process. I learn a few new things every time I get to see you work. This is gonna be another knockout piece for sure:thumbup::thumbup:
 
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