Sent in comments on the subject of forging BIG stuff

I may be wrong, but I'm thinking 'When people with skills are cheap, and better tools are expensive.'

When you get to the BIG hammers, swages, rollers and stock

No, you don't need power tools to make a knife

No question, having a grinder and belt sander and drill press makes it a lot easier and faster, but it can be done without them.  So can polishing without a buffer.  So this is a quick how-to on that.

Things you WILL need
Hacksaw.  And good blades.  General rule is you want to have three teeth across the thickness of the piece, so finer teeth for thinner stock.  This is 1/8", so I'm using 32 teeth-per-inch.  24 tpi would work well, but they were out of them.
Files.  Good ones.  Get a bastard file, preferably 12" or 14".  10" will do, but get longer if you can.  A bastard is generally the coarsest, fastest-cutting file, so use it for most material removal.
File card or wire brush.  File card is a special brush just for cleaning bits of metal out of the file teeth; a stiff wire brush will work pretty well.
Vise.  You NEED a solid vise.  Doesn't have to be huge or a blacksmiths' post vise, just a good-quality one that's solidly bolted down so it won't move.
Clamps.  Something to clamp the blade to a board.  C-clamps work well.
Drill.  You can drill pin or rivet holes with a hand-crank drill; a power drill does make it faster and easier.
Abrasive paper.  Get wet/dry paper, and get good-quality stuff; it'll last longer and cut faster.


Ok, start by taking your steel

and drawing the outline of the knife you want.

In this case I'm using a full-tang style like the kitchen knives; that means the tang is the full width and length of the grip area, you drill pin or rivet holes to help lock the scales in place.  A narrow tang I'll add a picture of later, as I just realized I don't have a shot of one.

Clamp it in the vise, and start making cuts from the edge of the steel to the line you drew

Then start at the end, and start cutting those pieces off along the line.

By making each section short, you can do a pretty good job of breaking a curve down to short straight cuts.  Then do the other side.

Then cut the tang.

No pics of that, use your imagination.

I'll note that making a long cut, like along a straight line for the tang, you may have to clamp the piece so you can hold the hacksaw at a flat angle to make the full cut.

Now adjust the piece so you can start filing the sides down to the line.

 Which should give you the profile you want.

There are two ways to file.  The usual is to push the file across the piece, which works well.  For smoothing a long area you want as true(flat & straight) as possible, draw-file: hold one end of the file in each hand, place it at the far end of the piece and draw it toward you.  There's a fine series of videos of the gunsmith at Colonial Williamsburg making a rifle from scratch, and in the second, at the 3:00 mark, it shows them using files to shape the flats on the barrel this way.

Now you need to mark on the sides where you want the transition from ricasso(the area just in front of the guard or end of the cutting area) to edge, and it helps a lot if you mark the edge.  In this case using a square and a scribe* to mark lines.  Adjust the end of the ruler so it's right at the middle, lock it, and draw it along the blade, using the scribe to mark a line.

 Then go the other direction and do the same thing.  Or flip the square over. 

 By doing it on each side, if the scribe isn't EXACTLY centered, you wind up with two lines that outline the actual edge.  Which gives you lines to file to(embigginate to see them)

Now comes the hard part: cutting the bevels, the angles from the back to the edge.

Get a piece of 2x4 or something else solid, clamp it in the vise.  Solidly, you don't want it shifting.  Then clamp the blade to it, with the edge right at the edge of the wood.

 so you can file from the edge to the back of the blade.

 Most of the time, one clamp won't cut it, so either put another where it'll brace the piece so it can't move,

or drive a nail or screw into the wood so it blocks the blade from moving.  Make sure it's low enough that the file won't hit it.  Then start filing.

I was using a 10" bastard(biggest I had), and spent ten minutes to get to this point

Little difficult to see, but it has actually removed a fair amount of material

Stop every minute or so and use the brush to clean the file; it'll cut faster and getting the bits out will give a cleaner cut, too.
ADDED: I was reminded in comments of something I forgot: chalk.  Rub some chalk on the file before use, it will help keep bits from getting stuck in the teeth.


For actually shaping the blade, that's it.  Keep filing on one side until you've got it down to the line at the edge.  I'd suggest stopping just shy of the line, then draw filing to make sure the surface is flat, or if you're not worried about perfect surfaces then fairly even.  Then flip it over and do the other side.

To polish out the file marks, start with about 80-grit wet/dry paper.  Cut a strip you can wrap around the file, or a finer file if you have one, or you can use the whole sheet if you prefer: wrap it around and as a section gets dulled turn the file over and use the other side.  When it gets dull, tear that section off.

Before you start this, put the paper in water for at least half-an-hour before using it; the water will help float the bits cut off, so they don't clog the paper as fast.  And keep some water handy to dip it in occasionally so flush the filing dust off and keep water on the abrasive.

When you've got that as smooth as you wish, move up to 120-grit or so.  You can take this just as fine as you wish, but I'd suggest stopping at 180 or 220-240 since the heat-treating is still to come.

The rest is as shown in the 'doing it with power tools'(shut up) post: mark and drill the pin holes, heat-treat, then polish.  At that point you can really polish it, but for a working knife I'd suggest no finer than 320 or 400.  Remember that after heat-treating, it'll be harder to work on, so don't get discouraged if it takes longer than you'd thought.

Making the grips, same idea: use a saw to cut to shape, then use rasp and/or file to shape, then sandpaper to finish.

And that's it.

Yes, I'm working on the next knife post

It's going to be another long one, may break it into two.  But it will get there.

A couple of knives, beginning to end

I'd mentioned making some kitchen knives for the offspring & wife.  I got the big one done in time for them to take back with them, but the smaller, no.  So thought I'd go over how I'm making them*

I'm starting with a flat piece of O1 tool steel, 2" wide and 1/8" thick. 

 Use the hacksaw to cut an appropriate piece.

 Mark the point(a bit oversize), and the tang(where the grips go),

 and cut them, leaving the rough blank.

 Go to the grinder and clean up the profile.

Here I had taken it to the anvil to straighten, as it had a bit of curve in it.  Then I hit it with the belt sander to clean up the sides a bit.  Which could've been done on the grinder as well.

 Next step, grind** the edge area to a little over 1/16" thick. 

I work back from there, grinding material off, cutting deeper toward the edge, on both sides.  Light pressure, and keep it even.  Keep a bucket of water handy so you can cool it off when it gets uncomfortably hot.  In this case, the steel being in an annealed state, you can't mess up the hardness by getting it too hot, but you can burn the crap out of yourself.

When it looks pretty even on both sides,

 make sure the face of the grinding wheel is even, and work it lengthwise.

 This lets you see if you have any high or low spots to deal with, also if you need to change your angle a bit.  I'm grinding this so it's a straight taper from back to edge, so if I do this step and find the bevel is a bit off, I can correct that. You can make the bevel run from the back, partway down, wherever you choose for the blade shape/size/steel you're using.

 When that's done and all looks even, I go to the belt sander.  This is a 6x48" model with a 9" disc on one side(same one I used in crowning that barrel).  Keep that water handy, and start with a coarse belt(in this case 80 grit).  Work both sides, and clean up the marks from the grindstone.

You can also clean up the profile now.  When you have all the coarser marks gone, go to a finer belt. 
Note: they make a eraser-type block to clean the dust out of the grit, I highly recommend it.  I used to have a tube of a belt lubricant as well, you used it on the belt before you started cutting and it helped keep the grit from clogging.  Wish had some of it left.

Work each grit at a slightly different angle, which makes it easier to be sure you got rid of all the previous scratches.  And make sure the tang is flat as well.

A word on belts, this size or any other: locally I can find 80, 100, 120 and 180 grit.  If ordering, I can get anything from VERY coarse(as in 36) up to 400 grit.  If I were working on something I wanted a very fine finish on, I'd get a selection up to 400, then use buffing wheels for a higher polish.

But not right now.  We'll be going to the forge to harden these blades, and taking it beyond 180-200 would be a waste.  Much like polishing a gun you're going to rust-blue beyond, say, 320.

One more note here: the steel is as soft as it's ever going to be, so get the profile cleaned up and the bevels correct now.





Here's my forge.

  It's an old Champion portable, cast-iron bed and a hand-crank blower(I did have a bigger forge, different design; it gave up not long after I had to stop forging).  I used to use coal for the fuel(more heat per pound), and I still have a five-gallon bucket left, but to keep the smoke down here, since it's now available, I'm using charcoal.

NOT briquets.  They make those by grinding the charcoal to dust and mixing it with a binder, usually clay, wetting it and forming it into those nice, uniform pieces.  But the binder generates a LOT of ash, and causes it to spit badly when you start pushing air through.  Now, happily, raw charcoal is easily available, so I'm using that.

This odd-looking piece is for heating longer blades than these; piece of iron pipe cut in two with a bunch of holes drilled through.  Allows you to have a longer, narrower fire when needed.  In this case did not use it, blades not that long.  Do note that you need to either use a piece of brick or something to block the ends so the air doesn't all take the easy way out.

 I use some fire bricks to form a narrow channel(Yes, I forgot to take it out for the pic). 

A barbeque fire chimney works nicely to light it,

just let it sit until the coal is all burning, then dump it into the firebed.

This is my quenching trough.  Since these are small blades I'll prop one end up and just use the other end, that'll be plenty of oil.  As the fire is burning in, I'll stick a piece of heavy steel in- in this case a railroad spike- to heat, then I'll drop it into the oil to warm it.  Warm oil flows more easily, and gives a more even quench.  And if it's cool or cold outside, that'll also mean a bit less thermal shock to the steel.

As to the oil, more years ago than I care to remember I dug around and found a industrial oils company in Tulsa(they're still there) and called them.  They put me through to a salesman who listened to what I was doing and suggested a light quench oil, and sold me a five-gallon bucket.  I've still got about half, and if it hadn't been for some spills there'd be more; it doesn't wear out, just cap it tightly when not using it to keep moisture out.

When the fire is ready, what I do is put the blade in back down for a couple of minutes,

with low air blast, to warm the piece slowly.  That does two things:
I can pull it out and see if the blade warped any as it heated(and can straighten it now), and
I think it acts as a stress-relief heat.

Then it'll go in edge down. 

Low air blast at first and move it back & forth to heat it evenly, then stronger air when you're ready to bring it up to critical temperature.

You don't have to get the whole blade up to critical temperature, I like to get the area from the edge back to the line

up to full heat.  Keep it moving to keep the heat even, get it to that shadowless red I wrote about before, then into the oil, edge down.

Why only that part of the blade?  It's called differential hardening: the part that does the cutting, both now and as it wears down over time with sharpening***, is fully hardened, and the area behind that, since it's below critical temperature, will harden some, but not completely; more of a spring hardness.  I started doing that quite a while back, and especially for big blades and need to be able to take the shock of heavy cutting and chopping, it works beautifully.

You can get some of the same effect from getting the whole blade up to heat, but only lowering the 2/3 to 3/4 of the blade from the edge back into the oil; the rest will cool much more slowly and not fully harden.

I do two quenches.  While the first blade is cooling, I heat and harden the second.  By the time that's done I can look the first over, see if it warped and needs straightening.  If all's well, back to the fire with the same procedure as the first time, then same with the second blade.

This is out of the oil and cooled. 

No, no pictures of the heating and hardening, I'm not going to try to do those things and juggle a camera. 

Once cooled, or if you're impatient after it's been in the oil at least 30 seconds(preferably a minute), check the edge area with a sharp, fine file; set one side of the blade on something to steady it and slide the file across.  In the case of good medium and high-carbon steels, if they fully hardened the file will slide right off, doing nothing more than cleaning the surface a bit.  With a medium-carbon steel it might be more of a sensation of the file almost biting.  If the file actually bites, you didn't get it quite up to full critical temperature and it'll have to be heated and quenched again.

Wash the pieces thoroughly to get rid of the oil, then into the oven at 400F**** with a wire rack to keep them edge up.  They're also sitting on either a cookie sheet or baking stone(another reason to do a good job washing) to even out the heat.   At this point, remember: those hardened blades are hard.  Brittle hard.  Drop them on a hard surface and they may well crack.   So handle them carefully.

Leave them in for an hour, then pull out and let air cool.  At this point I'll take them to the belt sander and shine them up, then back into the oven.  Yes, I could do this before the first tempering heat, but remember that part about brittle?  I'm more comfortable doing this after the first heat.

Another hour in the oven, this time at 425F, then let them cool and look at the color.  With this steel and for this purpose, I like a medium-bronze color, which corresponds to a tempering heat of 425, if you cleaned all the oil off and have a shiny surface to start with.  Hard enough to hold an edge quite well, not so hard that you'll chip the edge hitting a bone or something.  After it's cool, back in the oven for one more hour, at the end of which turn the oven off and leave them to cool inside.  In this weather, and tired as I am, that means I'll start the finish grinding, drilling for pins and polishing tomorrow.  Which will be another post.

Just to cover everything, while the blades were cooling I scooped the remaining charcoal out and into the water bucket, poured the oil back into its bucket, and generally cleaned-up and put-away.

You DO have a water bucket around while doing stuff like this, don't you?  Uses are wide, from putting out the charcoal afterward, to 'Guess I better put that grass out', to "OW!  HOTHOTHOT!"





*Because I didn't think to do this on the big one.
**You can do the whole thing on a belt grinder.  I like to do the heavy work on the wheel, and save the belts for flat-grinding and polishing; they're not cheap.
***Use good steel and heat-treat it right, it'll last longer than you'll live before it gets past the hardened area.
****I know this steel, the second temper will be at a higher heat but I like to start here with O1.

Two good pieced at Gun Nuts Media

on night sights: Do you need and More discussion of.


More and more, I think we should just start randomly dumping federal agencies.


Overall a good piece: 6 Things Movies Get Wrong About Swords

Oh, pretties,

I want some.

Damn, I miss making things.

Today, first time in a loooong, time, pulled out the portable forge and lit it; had three knives needed heat-treating(still can't do much in the way of forging).  Right now I still smell like coal smoke; a very familiar scent.

Since I'm on a trip down Memory Lane,

One of the questions I've been asked a lot while demonstrating was "Don't you/Do you ever get burned?" Oh yeah. Look at my forearms and the backs of my hands in good light; they're fading, but you can still see lots of little burn scars. The worst, there's no sign of.

Follow me back to the Old Days. The forge is still under a tree in the back yard, there's an old refrigerator crisper drawer under it full of water as a quench tub, and I'm working on a spring fuller(somewhat like this, but forged in one piece). It'd been a nice cool night and was a warm day, good weather for this kind of thing.

So I'm working away, on the fuller and a couple of small things as the piece of spring I was using was heating. I'd done one part of it, moved it along in the fire, let it heat while doing something else, came back and grabbed it.
Note to anyone: when you grab something and hear a hiss, it is a Bad Thing.
I heard that hiss, and before felt anything realized that that piece was a LOT hotter than it should have been where I grabbed it.

Remember that quench tub? It was full of water. And leaves, and the dogs drank out of it*, and it would not qualify as anywhere near clean, but after sitting out all night that water was cold; I think it took less than a second from 'hiss' to hand going into the water. At which point I'm bent over wondering what it's going to feel like when I take it out, and the dogs have wandered over to see what I'm doing in their sipping fountain, and I'm still shocked enough I'm not even indulging in language practice. I finally took it out when the throbbing made it plain that just cold water wasn't going to cut it, made sure everything was turned off and went inside to inform spouse that a trip to the doctor might be in order, what do you think?

The doc's office got me in fast, and the nurse looked it over, poured a pan full of antiseptic and had me stick the hand in: "Let that soak until the doctor can see it." I've been hurt before and since, in various ways, but with one exception I think burns are the worst, and sitting there with that hand in room-temperature liquid... I really don't remember if I was saying or thinking anything, because the pain was overriding all other memories.

I finally got up(only about five minutes, I think) and stuck the hand under the cold water in the sink for some relief, just before another nurse stuck her head in and asked what was I doing? I sat back down and she looked my hand over, frowned at the palm and asked "What is this?"
"Burn."
I swear, she actually wrinkled up her face and went "Eeew!"** Not a confidence-building moment, I assure you.

A minute later the doc came in and looked it over: Think of the parts of your palm and fingers that would contact a 5/8" rod if you gripped it; 1st, 2nd and a couple of areas of borderline 3rd-degree burn. Ointments went on, followed by bandages, followed by 'fill this prescription' and some instructions to wife who'd been called in. The pharmacy downstairs had the stuff- Tylenol 3, the stuff with codeine- and I took one as we started home.

Once home, I remember pacing back & forth in the living room, because that was, at that time, the worst pain I'd ever been in, and the kids on the sofa watching. Then it started fading a bit, and right about 45 minutes after taking the pill, the pain just stopped. I'd never had pain meds before and hadn't been sure what to expect; this exceeded all I'd hoped for. Not fuzzy, not seeing things, it just stopped hurting***. It was wonderful, Better Living Through Chemistry indeed. One of those every eight hours through the first 24, and after that it was just an annoying pain, nothing like at first.

Wife had a long-standing interest in herbal stuff, and mixed up some kind of oil and herbs mix, and when changed the bandages put some of that on. I have no idea what was in it, but it apparently worked; when went back to the doc he looked it over and was amazed at how well it was healing. Said he'd thought they might have to debride some dead tissue, but didn't have to touch it. And it healed up very nicely.

And that is the story of the worst injury I ever had from smithing.


*One reason I laugh at people who insist "Your pet must have a scrubbed bowl filled with fresh water every 'X' hours" and such; we're talking about critters who'll ignore a freshly-filled water bowl to drink out of that tub. Or the birdbath.
**Found out she was new, this was her second day on her fresh-out-of-school job. Apparently "Don't make noises that make the patient wonder what the hell is wrong" training had slipped.
***Told this to someone a few years later, and he said it was disappointing I didn't get any high from it. My response: "Fuck that, it stopped hurting. "

I am moved to write a bit about forging,

back when. As in when I was working it every chance I had(no, it's not quite the Devonian Age; shut up). Was married back then, and the house had a six-foot-square garden shed; after I built my big forge(more on that later) I fabricated a hood and chimney and put it in the shed. So figure a 6x6' space with a two-foot-wide forge, stump and anvil, and- after I found one I could afford and repair- a post vise mounted to a stud opposite the forge. No, not much room; but I did one hell of a lot of work in that place. Knife blades and guards and pommels, fireplace tools, camping stuff, candleholders and a bunch more(I've got pictures around somewhere, but right now I'm too beat to dig for them; I'll try to add them later).

Now, there were really only two drawbacks to that setup: one was heat in hot weather, and the other was noise. Yes, I had a pair of earmuffs, and wore them when I could(no earplugs; God, what I'd have given for a couple of sets of good ones); couldn't wear them all the time. Light pieces, no real problem, but when it came to big stuff- say, 1/2" high-carbon stock or 3/4" mild steel and up, or forging a damascus billet... that anvil rings. LOUD. The original Security Staff ignored it most of the time, but on those pieces, this one
would stand outside the door and howl; between the two, it got damn loud.

I mentioned heat, did I not? Ok, think of a 90+ degree day, and you're in a six-foot square space with a fire hot enough to burn steel, and a bunch of hot steel; I think working in a steel mill couldn't have been any worse. The rule is you wear long sleeves and pants, boots, etc.
Yeah, right.
In that weather I'd wear shorts and a t-shirt with a bandana tied around my head to try to soak up the sweat before it could drip down my glasses. And I'd drink constantly. Actually, 90+-degree days with low humidity weren't too bad: just drink enough. High-humidity days... On the former it really didn't feel bad to me(either my temp sense was fried or I was just used to it), in large part because in that heat the sweat dried fast. The latter days, you sogged. The shirt, the shorts were soaked and almost dripping, and no matter how much you drank it didn't seem to be enough.

God knows why I'm still alive.

Which brings me to what started this trip down memory lane: it comes and goes, and right now I've got that sound like something running in the other room living in my left ear. Between shooting when I was a kid, before plugs and muffs were commonly available, and all the hammering later, my ears give me hell at times. I guess they match up with the hell my hands(and sometimes an elbow*) give me over it all.

Oh, and add in the coal smoke, and oil smoke from quenching blades. Small ones weren't bad, but big ones... in hot weather I could set the quench tub just outside the door, but cold days I'd have to have it in with me: small pieces cool off so fast in cold weather there was no choice. When I finally was able to get a bucket of actual quenching oil, it made a big difference; still smoked, but not quite as much, and didn't smell as bad as motor oil.


*I don't blame the shoulder on this; it's from the damned bicycle crash. As I said at the time: "I've been riding motorcycles for years, gone rappelling, scuba diving, done SCA combat and other crap, and what damn near puts me in the hospital? A bicycle."
And if you're wondering, yes, the kids wore plugs or muffs from the time of their first shots; by that time I'd been able to get some of each.

I've added a couple of links on the sidebar

for blacksmithing tools & equipment.
Centaur Forge is pretty much a 'has it all' place: forges, blowers, tools, books, videos, materials. Including horseshoes and shoe stock.

Enco is an industrial supply place; lots of tools, but the main reason I included it is the steel and brass stock. Lots and lots of it in different alloys, shapes and sizes.

As I recall other places I'll add them to the list.

This is just freakin' awesome

Starting with iron ore, down to the completed blades.

thanks to Uncle for the pointer

A little personal history

Way back, when I was first working out forging, I knew a blade- and a lot of other things- had to beheat-treated, but didn't really understand the why and only a fuzzy idea of how. So did some reading(couldn't find a lot at the time,pre-internet it was books only and not yet a lot of them). A lot of the stuff I could find was more industrial-oriented, but got the idea.

I've mentioned this job before, basically two steps: bring the piece up to critical temperature and
quench in the proper medium to harden; then heat again to a lower temp to temper*. Nice and simple;but the first times you do it... not just stressful on the steel.

I'd learned to forge and grind and polish blades fairly well, but knew had to heat-treat them properly before they'd be ready for real use**. So gathered my special material. Which in this case was some old motor oil.
A quick digression: the proper medium to quench in depends on the steel(and sometimes
on the end use); for blades even a steel rated as water-hardening usually gives best results with an oil quench; a steel that hardens beautifully in water in a large structure may well crack if made into a blade and water-quenched, it just cools TOO fast and the shock is too much.
There are oils made specifically for hardening different types of steel, but I not only didn't have any I didn't know where to get them and couldn't have bought them if I had(two little kids, etc.) So this attempt started with motor oil. And I didn't know that it was best to warm it either(though if I were smart enough I'd have figured that part out on my own). In any case, I had about two quarts of oil in a bucket, and two small blades for the trial.

Lit the forge, worked it to a clean fire and put the first piece in. This part, no problem, just work
the blade back & forth, turn it over to keep the heat even, get to that proper shade of red that meant critical temperature***. This was a short blade to make this easier, and it only takes a few minutes to get it there, and then pull it out of the fire and plunge it into the oil.

Oh yeah, it smokes and stinks, and I was standing there wondering if it would crack from the shock. It didn't. A piece that comes out of the quench looks gray and scaled(especially from dirty oil), and you have to clean off the oil and scale and shine it up to see if there are any flaws. There weren't, so came the tempering.

Turn the blower back on, low, and start working the blade back & forth and turning it to heat it evenly. You have to keep it clean as you do this, so you can see the color of the steel**** to tell how hot it is, how hard it is. (very)Generally speaking, for a general-use knife with steel like I had you looked for a dark yellow-light bronze shade which indicates around 450F. The level of stress I was feeling as I worked that blade around was incredible; it was so damned important
to me that this work. What I had read said that it was best if you didn't have to quench it again to stop the heat, to time it so when you took the blade away from the fire the color would not continue to darken. Amazingly, I managed to time it right, and let it cold down completely, and test it.

The first test is with a file; a sharp file should almost cut the edge of a properly hardened blade;
if it actually cuts metal away the blade is too soft and won't hold an edge well, if it won't cut
at all(just slides off) it may be too hard and the edge will chip or crack in hard use. So clamp the tang in a vise and try it, and it seemed just about right. So the next is to clamp an inch or so of the point in the vise and see if it'll flex without breaking, not only to make sure it's not too hard but to find if there might be a flaw hiding inside from the forging or hardening. I cannot
describe the elation as I flexed that blade back & forth like a spring, tough enough that I couldn't
bend it, just coming back to straight when I took the pressure off. Effing incredible, and I'd done it. Myself. With my home-built forge and charcoal and a piece of coil spring. If there'd been a woman handy...

When I calmed down a bit I did the second blade, and it worked too! I was damn near floating above the ground I was so high. And when sharpened they actually cut, and held the edge well! Just bleepin' amazing!

A somewhat disgusting number of years has gone by since then, but I still remember it. Lots of knowledge and experience gained, and materials; a few years later I found a place in Tulsa that sells industrial oils and got a five-gallon bucket(of which I still have about two gallons) of light quenching oil; I found places where I could buy oil- and water-hardening tool steel of different alloys for downright cheap, though I still used spring stock for a lot of blades; I found places to get coal instead of charcoal briquets for the fire. I made a lot of things in time to come, small and large, but I still remember the feelings when I heat-treated blades for the first time.


*Quick repeat from years ago: the quench- if you have the temp right- freezes the steel structure in a very highly stressed state, makes it brittle-hard; the tempering heat relieves enough of the stress to remove the brittleness but still leaves it stressed- hard- enough to be tough & flexible AND still hold an edge in use.
**Realistically, back when in the historical periods I was interested in- especially the early ones- the steel I was using, just ground to shape, would have made a better blade than most of humanity would have access to for centuries to come; but to help that steel come to its real potential...
***One of the tricky things, the difference between a little too cool where it won't harden fully and a little too hot which coarsens the structure and makes the blade less than it can be. To get a bit poetic, I came to describe it as 'the moment when that slight shadow in the steel disappeared', which if you actually watch the piece heat is true.
****One of the things I later did was temper in the oven; clean off the oil and shine the piece, and you could set it in at a known temperature. By the way, another method was to heat an iron block really hot and then work the blade on the surface to heat it, or lay a piece of iron pipe-an arch, if you will- over the fire to heat and work the piece on it.

In a break from the cleaning up that would be done

if I didn't keep taking breaks, something else made years ago, when I realized I needed some carving chisels
Little closer look at the blades, different widths and bevels
They were all forged from overhead garage door spring, an amazingly useful stuff for a blacksmith. For that matter, from larger spring you could use a torch to heat it, then pound it straight and grind it. Heat-treated properly, holds an edge very well. The handles were turned on Dad's lathe.

In the garage is a set of larger ones forged from auto coil spring. Very handy tools at times; the big ones originally made when I started making knife sheaths out of walnut and maple for some blades.

Friend used this at the Tulsa gun show, and it occurred to me

that this was a piece I'd never posted a picture of: my old business card holderForged out of one piece of 1/4" square bar stock, with the tongue added in

Damn, I miss making things like this

Thoughts on the fair

Went down for the day, and it was really strange: no booth to watch, no forge to run. And there was this empty space where my setup used to be! Damn. On the gooder side, I saw more shows and other artisans work and more stuff today than I think I had in at least the last five years.

One of the things I really liked about working it? When someone would show up with a broken something and "Can you fix it?" Or a piece and "Can you make some more?" Or "I need 'X' for a display rack/support, can you make me one?" I saw a number of those pieces today; Deity only knows how many tent stakes are in the ground right now that came out of my fire.

I can't remember if I'd shown these before, but it seems appropriate: this is my sgian dhu, and the new dirk I made myself(one of the few blades I ever made just for me):The dirk is 18" overall, 13" blade, about 1.6" wide and just under 1/4" thick at the guard. The blade is 5160 spring steel, the guard and pommel hammered nickel silver, the grip curly walnut. The blade tapers in width and thickness over most of the length.

The sgian dhu is 8" overall, 3.75" blade from the front of the collar to the point, just under 1" wide and .13" thick. This blade started as a 3/4" ball bearing, 52-100 steel. And forging it from ball to bar was a pain. The collar is nickel silver, the grip walnut. The final finish on both blades was done with a buffing wheel and 400-grit greaseless compound.

And yes, they're both sharp.

I've still got my older 'dirk'- actually a stright-clip bowie design' but no picture handy, I'll get one later. That started off as something made to sell, but I couldn't turn loose of it. Good knife; I just decided to make one more fitting for kilt wear, with sheath to match.

I miss making this stuff.