knife you in the face!
Three weeks ago I started a new knife, the last one was too thin and burning in the forge was just too big of a problem.
The one one make the other look like total crap.
I started with a BALL BEARING. One the size of a kiwi fruit.
Put it in the forge and got it up to about orange color, which was actually further than I needed to go, but it was fun to hold it in the tongs. It honestly looked like having a small sun in your hands, wicked hot, glowing and dangerous as hell.
I dropped it in vermiculite for 45 minutes to let it cool down. Had I started hammering on it I would have very quickly gotten it to shatter. Or so I'm told...
The prof helped me weld a piece of rebar on the end of it, same piece of rebar from my last knife actually.
I got it red hot again, then I took it to THE POWER HAMMER. I proceeded to whack the living hell out of the ball, until I got it nice and flat. Maybe 5" long and about 1/3" thick.
Next came the tang, which was a serious BITCH to put in. I had to use this crazy guillotine device to pinch the end of my blade ... I held it in the device and the prof got the biggest hammer on site (5lb sledge or so?) and just nailed it, pinched it down in two hits. I went after and cleaned up the end and got it extruded out a good 4".
Next, took it over to the grinder and cleaned the hell out of it. Lots of scale and wrong thicknesses, but nothing a good belt grinder won't fix.
Chore #2 came when putting the angles on the shoulder of the tang, so I could run a finger guard up on it made from brass or such. This required mounting to a vise and using round files to gradually shape the sloping angle. PITA.
And here it is:
The blue you see on there is paint used to let me scribe my knife design onto the blade face. The other side is completely blue actually, and doesn't photograph well. Looks black.
Next week, grind it down to form the blade ramp and then start to put a handle on it. I think I want to use Corian, which is easy to work with and grind. Anthracite looks like a good handle color. All the other colors are here.
This knife making is lots of fun. Once I got into it, I didn't want to leave class when we got kicked out of the shop. That's NEVER happened before in any University class. Perhaps because I'm making weapons...
I am thinking I want to buy this so I can try to clone it. The guy that made this did an awesome job. Corian, too!
The one one make the other look like total crap.
I started with a BALL BEARING. One the size of a kiwi fruit.
Put it in the forge and got it up to about orange color, which was actually further than I needed to go, but it was fun to hold it in the tongs. It honestly looked like having a small sun in your hands, wicked hot, glowing and dangerous as hell.
I dropped it in vermiculite for 45 minutes to let it cool down. Had I started hammering on it I would have very quickly gotten it to shatter. Or so I'm told...
The prof helped me weld a piece of rebar on the end of it, same piece of rebar from my last knife actually.
I got it red hot again, then I took it to THE POWER HAMMER. I proceeded to whack the living hell out of the ball, until I got it nice and flat. Maybe 5" long and about 1/3" thick.
Next came the tang, which was a serious BITCH to put in. I had to use this crazy guillotine device to pinch the end of my blade ... I held it in the device and the prof got the biggest hammer on site (5lb sledge or so?) and just nailed it, pinched it down in two hits. I went after and cleaned up the end and got it extruded out a good 4".
Next, took it over to the grinder and cleaned the hell out of it. Lots of scale and wrong thicknesses, but nothing a good belt grinder won't fix.
Chore #2 came when putting the angles on the shoulder of the tang, so I could run a finger guard up on it made from brass or such. This required mounting to a vise and using round files to gradually shape the sloping angle. PITA.
And here it is:
The blue you see on there is paint used to let me scribe my knife design onto the blade face. The other side is completely blue actually, and doesn't photograph well. Looks black.
Next week, grind it down to form the blade ramp and then start to put a handle on it. I think I want to use Corian, which is easy to work with and grind. Anthracite looks like a good handle color. All the other colors are here.
This knife making is lots of fun. Once I got into it, I didn't want to leave class when we got kicked out of the shop. That's NEVER happened before in any University class. Perhaps because I'm making weapons...
I am thinking I want to buy this so I can try to clone it. The guy that made this did an awesome job. Corian, too!