A couple of pieces I've made during the pandemic

[My_Teenage_Self]

Ugh. my arms hurt...

Spent 2 hours hammering this into a single 25cm long bar about 10mm thick cut it into 3, stacked and welded it then had to leave it.




Total Layers 360 (although not yet welded!)
Total weight ??
Total time so far 6.5 hours.

Then we get to the ball bearing canister... I don't like full tang knives for many reasons, not least I don't enjoy making them as much as hidden tang. However, I have a lot of handle scales that need using up, and should have *just* enough steel to make this work;

A nice little bushcraft style. This billet weighs 354g.

Lots of hammering, heating and yet more swearing (burnt my hand as a bit of scale jumped between my finger and the hammer) and popped in Ash for a long while to cool super slowly and anneal (soften) the steel.


A lil' bit of grinding gives this;


it weighs 184g, still a weighty little thing, and I need to take some more weight out of the handle.

 

[eric_james]

I take it you must watch Forged In Fire. Awesome stuff you have done

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

I do, but I've been playing with knife making prior to FiF. It's a weird one though, I really enjoy the show, but the time format really buggers up the contestants processes, they do amazing work in the time & conditions they have. Proper normalisation takes me 30 mins alone. Annealing takes 12 Hours, so they're grinding all their blades rock hard. They don't show the tempering which is done between round 1 & 2 (it's filmed over 3 days), and takes maybe 4 hours. etc.

Did my first blacksmithing course 10? years ago and took forever to find a decent Anvil after that Only started forging at home about 3 years ago.

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

I'm back to bore you all

We were here;


Forge was going for 2hrs today; Heated that ^^^^ up to about 1000 degs, and over about 8 heats drew it out, then grind, cut, stack & weld again;


Getting smaller and smaller! Heated to welding temp again and over about another 8 heats ended up with this;




The end on the left will need to be cut off. I have an idea what to do with this, it'll be interesting to see how the layers present themselves.

Total Layers 1080 (with grinding & scale loss, we'll round it to 1000... )
Total weight 369g
Total time so far 8.5 hours.

All done in here;

 

[Iwasgoodonce]

some useful looking billets there. Can you predict what the pattern will look like? I decided in the end that I really don’t need a fly press. It is on the long list of things entitled, “Stuff I want but don’t really need.”
Instead, I went and got an anvil. Not a proper one. Again, that’ll just take up too much room in a very small workspace. I’ll only use it occasionally anyway.
I went for a Vevor forged steel anvil from ebay. Despite the company I got it from having a Chinese address, I ordered it on Friday morning and it arrived at my door yesterday afternoon! I need to get rid of all the sharp edges and then I’ll give it a go. I also ordered some used scaffolding boards with which to make a stand for it.

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

some useful looking billets there. Can you predict what the pattern will look like?

yeah.... not really! other might be able to, but I can't

You have an anvil and a forge... Chaos ensues!! Take my advice, follow Alec steeles advice and...

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

Back to the bushcraft blade. I refined it some and ground the bevels prior to heat treating it. I had to re-anneal it, as the handle was still too hard to drill after my first annealing cycle (so, held it at around 850-950 degrees as best I could for 30 mins, then cooled super-slowly in wood ash).



Ground some bevels while it was still 'soft' and then normalised & heat treated (oil quench, 2x 2 hour tempers at 210 degrees).



Then Lots of sanding (and swearing). The fitup on this is a bugger, as the blade and handle have to be 100% finished together prior to etching, disassembled, then fitted together permanently (including flaring the tube pins) to preserve the etch on the tang.

Full tang, ball bearing canister damascus (6mm 52100 bearings & 1095 powder), curly oak handle, 8mm flared stainless tube pins. 3.5" blade 8.0" overall. Weight; 137g.




Really pleased with this one - the bevels in particular are super sharp and even. Just need to sharpen it and make a sheath

 

[raidan73]

Amazing work Steve

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

Amazing work Steve

Thanks Bud! And thanks to dyna-ti for the handle material!

 

[Iwasgoodonce]

Love it! I much prefer that grind over the typical bush knife grind. Bevels of only 6mm or so look odd to my eyes. There’s some character in that wood isn’t there?
I am making a stand for my little anvil at the moment. Just pondering how best to screw it down. I think I have a plan.