After a couple hours of annealing/normalizing, the blade was ready to be ground down to the correct thickness.(sadly didn't get any pictures of me actively grinding down the knife, but got post grinding photos)
Post annealing
Post grinding, which causes a sort of scaly look
Grinding was finished, leaving the knife looking very scaly and uneven, so it was time to belt sand the blade down so it was even.(Once again i was working alone so i didnt get any photos of me actively sanding the knife)
Next up is quenching it, you heat the knife to almost white hot, then dip it in oil, chanes the molecular structure again, hardening it further and setting the grain of the knife(which stops it from cracking and breaking)
One way to check if a tool is quenched well, you can run a file down it, if it skids, but doesn't actually bite into the steel, then it is quenched well, this knife let it bite in a bit, so it wasn't perfect but it was very close.
The second to last step is hardening, there are different levels of strength, each for different types of tools, i wanted this knife as hard as possible so i wanted it to become yellow, to do this you heat the knife up to 375, and then quench it again, this can be done in a forge but it is very hard to estimate so i used an oven.
after the final hardening, i sanded it again, and that left this, the finishing product:
Original design
Miscellaneous cool looking forge photos:
I like how unique your post is, and that it has many pictures to show how the blacksmithing is done. However, you seem like you are creating this knife out of background knowledge. What useful have tips/skills have you learned from your book?
ReplyDeleteFrom my book, I learned how to properly hammer, draw out, flatten, shape, anneal, quench, and harden the knife. though I did use a lot of background knowledge for the very basic stuff, the more complex techniques i learned from the book. also my setup and safety precautions reflect things taught to me in the book.
DeleteThis is a very exciting read, and your blog is truly thrilling
DeleteThis was an interesting blog to look and read through as it’s not being done by other students and is unique in that way. While I knew a bit about blacksmithing from a couple of YouTube videos I’ve seen, it’s always cool to see the process regardless of which. A question I have for you would be how do you feel about the finished knife? Did it exceed your standards, perform under expectations, or was it just right?
ReplyDeleteThis was a very intriguing and engaging series of blogs. For my final question, how long did this process take for you in total?
ReplyDeleteWhat was the hardest part of this whole thing? There seems to be a lot of precision that goes along with this, but what was the most labor intensive?
ReplyDelete