First Forged Blade for a Rookie!

[Marvin M.]

I'm a lurker on here and admire the craftsmanship that is displayed.  I've put some handles on purchased blades and even participated in one of the knife swaps, but have never forged a blade -- until now.  At the risk of boring the pros on here, I'm going to try to relate my experience.  This will take me a while to get it all posted so hang with me!

Steve Auvenshine lives just down the road from me and occasionally puts on knife making seminars.  My wife (I love that woman) gave me the seminar for our anniversary last year but due to Steve's schedule he didn't have a seminar until Memorial Day weekend.  He takes a limited number of students for a weekend and you forge a knife and walk away with your completed project.  Steve was an apprentice with Frank House and does a lot of work for Hollywood.  There's lots of knowledge and tools available to do what needs to be done.

My friend Skip also attended this session so with only two of us, there was lots of one-on-one time.

We started Friday night with the forging of our blades.  Skip had attended a previous session so he was an old hat at this.  I went in with the idea that I wanted to make a larger version of one of my current knives that I like.  I've got one of the little Marbles Capers that I really like for field dressing and wanted something a little bigger.  Steve and I sat down and drew out a rough pattern and got to work.

   

Here I am shaping the blade.  If I remember correctly, we started with a bar of 1085 as the raw material.  The material was pretty thick so we determined that I would need to have a tapered tang to help with weight/balance and to keep the strength.  

I had seen you guys mention it on here before but it was very interesting to me to observe first hand that when thinning the blade, it wants to curve backwards.  I would have thought it would be the opposite.  

I left Friday night with my blade sitting in the ash bucket to cool slowly so that I could start shaping on Saturday morning.

   

Here's what I pulled out of the ashes Saturday morning.

More to follow

[D.Ellis]

Watching.    
Darcy

[Marvin M.]

That previous pic is the initial drawing and the knife blank I started working with.  I forgot to mention that I was shooting for a four inch blade.  That will give you and idea of the size.  Also, the initial drawing was for a straight back but we put some curve in that when we started shaping it.

 

Beginning the shaping process.  That's Steve in the background keeping an eye on what I was doing.  

We drew a rough outline on the blank and I started with a hack saw in taking it down to the lines.  At it got closer I switched to files.  There's a trend here.  Almost all of the work was done with files, and sandpaper.  There were some power tools available but this was a hand tool job for the most part.

I'm going for antler scales on this.  I got a couple of pieces of this to use for the handle.

   

As mentioned earlier, I was trying to make a larger version of my Marbles Caper.  This next pic shows the original design, the Caper we were copying, a trace of the blank with how the handle was to be shaped, and the shaped blank.  You can see the progression in there.

     

I spent lots of time doing this:

   

Shaping the blade and getting it ready to be a knife.

[Marvin M.]

While I'm working on mine, Skip is also making some progress on his.  

   

Here's his blank while planning the guard.  Skip's making a hidden tang hunter with a brass guard and pins and is using an antler from one of his kills for the handle.  

     

He's working on his here.  You can see his antlers in front of him in the picture.

[Marvin M.]

After the fact I tried to calculate my labor.  I had about 18 hours in this project by the time I was done.  Almost all the work was done by hand using files or sandpaper.

 

Steve is instructing me on shaping the handle scales in the picture above.  We did a rough shape first by tracing, then staying away from the lines.  We drilled the tang, then the scales individually.  Once both sides were drilled I put the pins in and checked the fit.  We always padded the vise any time we clamped a surface that needed a smooth finish.

A little more about the handle on my knife.  Since I was using a tapered tang, the tang was wider at the blade end and narrow at the heel.  For the right feel in the hand, I wanted it narrower at the blade and wider at the heel.  I did all the shaping to profile with files and sandpaper but the only real exception to using hand tools for me was in narrowing the scales and keeping them flat.  I made use of the belt sander for this step.

   

This is probably my favorite picture of the weekend.  This was the first fitting of the handle and with the tools in the background it just kind of sums up the whole process.  There's still a long way to go -- the handle is still pretty beefy, but it actually looks like a knife for the first time.  Notice the small ball peen hammer.  We'll use that to peen the pins when it's time.  Steve had a small reamer (I'm sure it has a different name) to enlarge the ends of the pin holes in the antler to give the pin room to expand.  We did that once the scales were shaped.

[Marvin M.]

More tomorrow

[gudspelr]

This is awesome   . Welcome to the addiction. Looks like you've got a fantastic first knife going. Files and hand tools are often over looked as effective means to make a knife. I started with files and learned a great deal by doing so. Your story is a great example to show anyone curious about trying this to go for it. Great job and looking forward to more photos.


Jeremy

[Alexander13]

Looks like a lot of fun! Great looking knives!

[NittanyRider]

Very cool... thanks for sharing!!

[Lin Rhea]

Your doing a fine job! Thank you for sharing the process and congratulations on using hand tools to make this knife. Let's see more as you get a chance.

[Marvin M.]

Skip is progressing on his as well.

 

Steve's helping him line up the drill in preparation for drilling the hole for the tang.  Anyone who's ever done this knows how critical this is.  You have to make a hole that will keep the blade straight when its mounted and make sure you don't drill out of the antler.  They lined it up, marked the drill bit with some tape for depth and nailed it!

Then the end of the antler had to be flattened so that there was no gap against the guard.  To do this, the guard was blackened with soot so that you could see where the antler was hitting and file them down until there was a good fit.

A piece of flat brass was cut the right size to make the guard, drilled and filed to accept the tang and the fit was checked to make sure there were no glaring gaps.

   

Here's a good shot of the blade in the vise after the antler was evened out to match the guard.

   

Checking the fit.  

   

Looks good!  If you look closely, you can see a dot about halfway down the antler.  That is where the pin will be.  This was carefully measured and estimated to make sure it looked good as well as made a strong connection.

     

Drilling the pin hole.  Go in careful.  Make sure you hit steel enough to mark it, then pull out and drill the steel outside the antler.  Use a punch to start the hole.  Once the hole is drilled in the tang, put it back in and drill through the hole in the antler, through the tang and out the other side of the antler.  There's less chance of ruining the antler or the tang if it's done this way.

More to follow.

[Marvin M.]

For what it's worth, I learned almost as much watching Skip as I did working on mine.  Having two different styles going at the same time really broadened the learning experience.

   

Skip and I spent time watching each other and encouraging each other throughout.  Sometimes Steve picked up the camera and snapped a shot for us.  

   

I spent a lot of time doing this.  You can see the files in front of me in the picture above.  There's Also a piece of rolled up sandpaper there that was wrapped around a file.  Steve offered me the use of the belt sander to shape the antler scales.  I did 90% or more with files and sandpaper.  I wanted the hands on feel of doing it and wanted to watch it slowly come together.  I'm glad I did it that way.  

Eventually we had the handles ready and we're ready to put things together.  That's when it got really SCARY!  It was time to put our blades back into the fire!

   

I had sweated over this thing for two days and now I have to put it back in the fire and heat it up again.  That's just cruel.

It's confession time.  When I was starting this process I got my steel to hot and made a sparkler out of the end of my bar!  Steve was cool about it and we just cut the end off and started over.  No harm -no foul, except to my confidence.  Steve was standing by and watching closely this time.

[Marvin M.]

Here are a few of the knives Steve had out when we got there.  These were ready to go to a show.  Just wanted to post up some of his work. The lighting was pretty poor  but the work was really impressive to me.

We're getting close here.  I should be able to finish this tomorrow or over the weekend.  Stay tuned.

[Marvin M.]

Steve's forge was open on one side and with the sun out it was hard to see colors of the steel so we hung the curtain over the open side and fired up the forge.  We heated up the quench bath (used motor oil) to 120 degrees and fired up the forge.  We brought my baby up to the right temp and I dunked it in the oil.  


I was told to; "Plunge it straight into the oil, point first and hold it still until it stops bubbling.  In the unlikely event that the oil catches fire hold it in there and don't move.  If you swish it around, it could bend."

   

Skips blade went through the same process.  

   

And this is what we got:

     

The sandpaper came out and we cleaned them up again in preparation for heat treating.

Here's what we got after that

   

Then it's back to the sandpaper to clean it up again.

[Marvin M.]

Skip is working on his guard while I clean mine up again!  I progressively took it down to 400 grit making sure I got all the tool marks out.

   

Skips guard is almost ready.

   

  And it's time for assembly.  We used five minute epoxy with some black tint in it to glue it up.

   
 
   I cleaned off the epoxy overflow while it was still rubbery with an exacto knife and then preened the pins.

   

[Marvin M.]

I started doing the final shaping of the handle while Skip finished shaping his guard.  

   

   

  Steve soldered in Skips guard and they did the final assembly and glue up on it.

   

   

We did some final shaping of the handle to get the feel right and then gave them both a tea bath to age the antlers a little.  After that, a little steel wool shined up the blades and we were good to go.

   
 
Here's what we wound up with.  Mine is on the top.  My blade is four inches and the overall length is just over eight.  I'll try to get another pic I from the back so you can see the tapered tang.  It was a great experience and I have a really nice knife to show for it.

[D.Ellis]

 
Nice work. Learned a new skill and have a cool new knife to boot! Can't beat that.
Darcy  

[just_a_hunter]

Awesome thread.

Thanks for sharing,

Todd

[South MS Bowhunter]

Great Knives Marvin!

[tomsm44]

Those both turned out great.  Yours looks like a handy design for what you say you intend to use it for.  If you could, post a picture of it with the one you modeled it after.  It'd be cool to see the set.

Matt Toms