Start of 1850's era Hunting Dagger

[tippit]

I've had a request for an 1850's era hunting dagger.  Never done a dagger, so this will be a new adventure for me...first forging with hammers.  I'm planning on an Elk antler handle with either a twisted metal guard or a poured pewter bolster...tippit

[tippit]

Profile ground and bevels started...

[tippit]

Thinking about something like this...

[Sockrsblur]

Looking good Jeff!

[tippit]

Pre-quench grind...I grind to almost finish.  That could turn and bite me as this is my first double edge blade.  Thus more chance for warping

[tippit]

I have a small elk antler for the handle and a nice piece of scrap Damascus for the finger guard.  Antler handle will probably be 4-4 1/2 inches.  Probably won't put it all together until I return home to Boston in June.

[Sockrsblur]

Sure looks great, hope she stays straight for you 

[tippit]

Good news  Bad news...
I quenched and tempered the blade today.  It had a slight warp coming out of the quench but I was able to straighten that by hand while it was still hot with welding gloves on.  Unfortunately I decided to tap the tang a little to straighten it too, but it got too cold and cracked the tang off.

Bad news is tang is too short.  Good news is the only way to really tell how good your quench is to break the knife to look at the inner structure of the steel.  What you want is the steel to have a fine grain structure looking like gray cream not gray salt.  We got gray cream!  Now the bad news isn't that bad as I can weld the tang or a piece of mild steel back on as the tang is completely hidden inside the elk antler.  After tempering, I finish ground the blade. 

Out of the tempering oven...



Finish ground blade...

[Soonerlongbow]

Looking good!

[JL]

Turn it into a spear head Jeff or one mean broadhead...lol! Glad to see your still at it!