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Here are a couple more San Mai hunter i just finished. 52100/420SS , G10 and Turkish Walnut handles.

Hello All, I participated in a YouTube Build along challenge and thought I would share the wootz knife I made for it. The handle is amboyna burl with brass pins. Enjoy! Ingot composition

The broad sax is now finished! It feels surprisingly agile for the width and thickness of the blade, possibly due to the long handle. I think I’ll use end caps on wrapped handles going forward. I also finally settled on a way to make these rivets. These are soldered together from rod and pattern wire. I also forged this kurzsaxe, I want to improve my groove scraping abilities, so this will hopefully have two narrow grooves on each side.

Just finished this one, which fought me all the way. 3 1/2" 1075 blade. Antler and bog oak handle, with a steel spacer between them. Steel bolster, and silver washer and silver gallery wire fittings. The pommel is set with a customer supplied bixbite/red beryl. Scabbard is copper covered in deerskin suede with silver fittings. let me know what you think...

Hi all, I've been a regular lurker here for years, but have only now gotten to the point where I'm happy enough with my knives to post some photos of my recent work on here. I'm a full-time bladesmith/knifemaker based in Staffordshire, England. I focus primarily on UK legal folding knives, although I also make a few historical Viking age hidden tang knives and wood-carving knives. A lot of my work is inspired by Anglo-Saxon and Viking age archaeological finds from around the British Isles & Northern Europe, and I use a lot of reclaimed old wrought iron & steel and locally sourced wood wherever I can. All of my knives are hand-forged and handmade by myself. Here is one of my latest folding knives - a dual-detente folder, forged from O1 Tool Steel with steel liners & backspacer, hand-peined stainless steel pins and brushed English white oak scales. I started off making only friction folders, then I made a few slipjoints and now I'm playing around with using detente bearings as they combine the best aspects of both styles for a functional non-locking pocket knife. You have the mechanical resistance to closing & opening, but you can still flip the blade open & closed with one hand. Second, we've got a Viking style friction folder with a laminated wrought iron & 1095 steel blade (heavily etched) and a one-piece handle hand-carved from English Boxwood. Next up, a slipjoint with a laminated wrought iron & 1095 blade with wrought iron bolsters and two-tone yew scales. Another dual-detente folder with an O1 blade - this time with a full-flat grind and slim Marblewood scales. Another UK legal slipjoint, this time with a laminated wrought iron blade, wrought iron bolsters and bog oak scales. One of my largest fixed blades that I made for a commission earlier this year; a reproduction of the Fulham seax. Laminated wrought iron & steel blade with Irish bog oak and Scottish Stag antler handle. The tang goes through the handle and is bent over at the butt to secure the brass ring. One more fixed blade; a Viking style sheath knife with a laminated bloom steel blade and a handle made from Scottish Stag antler, brass, leather and stacked birch bark. Lastly we have a different style; this is my take on the Viking age iron folding knives that have been found in Birka, Repton and Novgorod. Low-layer laminated 15N20 and 1095 blade with a hollow grind & a scrolled thumb-tab. The handle is forged from one bar of wrought iron. Both handle and blade have been heavily etched. From what I can tell, most of the surviving examples don't use a stop pin - the top of the handle is crimped slightly to stop the blade, but I decided a pin would make for a stronger mechanism. Any constructive criticism is most welcome! All my work can be found at www.willslockforge.com and I post regular updates and photos on Instagram under @willslockforge Feel free to get in touch via willslockforge@gmail.com Thanks for looking! Chris

Knife # 900 I have a few days hunting organised for this month so decided it was time to retire my old standby Light hunter with the end grain olivewood handles so I made myself this Tahr Hunter with scolloped OD canvas micarta handle over blaze liners with lanyard tube on the 1075 blade with jimping.

This scissors is rust blued wrought iron, sitting on the bar it came from. I probably etched it in ferric before bluing. The parts get boiled to blacken the rust, so I don't know if it qualifies as cold bluing.

A new butcher knife for me. Cryo quenched 9 inch nitroV blade with stainless bolster, stainless and G10 spacers and a G10 liner under the Honduran Rosewood handle.

The guard is shaped, etched and blued. Front side Back side

So the handle got shaped. I may still thin it down a little more though. The finial got turned and groud down to resemble the coffin shape. (a butt strike will be like getting stabbed with a flat head screwdriver). The tang extension got threaded and everything fits together nicely. Side view Full shot I etched all the pieces parts yesterday which was almost catastrophic. (note to self: remember to check the threaded rod used is really the stainless steel one and not the zinc plated one) I have to re-etch the guard again due to some minor zinc plating...... Now I will file work the liners.

Dang dude, this is awesome. Ha, when I first saw that pic, I thought "There is no way Joshua would be that far off on even a dry fit-up" so I had to look closer to see that the background was blending in with the handle. You got the benefit of the doubt though

While home for a while, decided to use up some left over antler tine into small knives…..(stocking stuffers at best) This one broke impatiently tapping on the guard. (6150 leftover stock). Really pleased with this break! Gary LT

It is true that I made them some time ago, but .... Sica are forged from a hot iron, the cutting edges are slapping the cold. The dimensions of the cladding on the horn: total length 43 cm, blade 32 cm, weight 420 grams. Very well in the hand. "Horse" is a tin bronze riveted with copper rivets two, lining of antlers riveted ........ and here the total new ...... rivets made of beech wood, glued. That I am sure in the original rivets were also organic, if not from wood with a bone or antler. The head is made of iron, riveted. The second Sica has an overall length 40.05 cm, blade 28.05 cm, weight 480 grams. Linings are riveted oak or beech wood studs, glued. Hilt and pommel are riveted. The blade is also tapping the cold.

There's only so many ways to make a functional knife and they've all been seen before. Doug

Alan, I should have put this under THE WAY section….. could you move it please? I made this hanger for a friend….. I personally use the Farmers Almanac to get the day moving ….. It’s not a prayer but it works like a charm ….. to read it not wipe with it….ha ha ha

I used this strategy to tin the back of a rivet solder on a piece of pattern wire and it worked pretty well! I think I’ll do all brass and no cast parts on the sheath I’m currently working on, but I may try making some bronze “washers” next, the model would be one of these: Also, I’m fairly pleased with how my prototype came out: I did not have much luck making a jig to punch out beaded “wire” from sheet, but I may make something more robust to try and forge it from solid bronze rods I have been casting with my extra metal every pour.

Thanks! Yew is one of my favourite woods for handles. As for UK knife laws, it's a good question. I could write an essay about it, but will try to keep it concise. In the UK we've been blasted with propaganda about knives being evil weapons for so long that a lot of people here are hesitant about carrying any knife and think all knives are illegal. However, that is not the case. The law is actually pretty clear. You can carry a non-locking folding knife that has a blade under 3" without needing a good reason. Any locking blade, larger blade or fixed blade and you need a reasonable explanation for having it on you if you get stopped by the police. Unfortunately this is where it gets vague. The definition of 'reasonable excuse' is often left to the interpretation of the police officer. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. For example, if I'm carrying a fixed blade whilst camping in a forest, that's usually fine. Or if I'm carrying a leatherman with a locking blade whilst riding my motorbike, most officers would accept that it's a necessary and useful tool for emergency repairs. BUT in those same two situations, with a different officer who has had a bad day, or who has an issue with you for whatever reason, or simply has a power complex, you could potentially be done for carrying a weapon in public. Sure, you could challenge it in court, but it's still a lot of trouble & hassle. So, even if you have a good reason, it's not always guaranteed to be a good enough reason. A big factor that isn't often taken into account is that all UK knife laws are written in London, with city knife crime being the main target. In rural areas, you'll find that most old farmers walk around with a locking pocketknife and they will likely never get stopped & searched. Personally, I prefer to carry a non-locking legal folder mainly because it still works for most of my daily cutting tasks and I can just leave it in my pocket and not need to think about any legal issues, no matter where I go. The reason I started making these folders is because I was looking to buy a traditional, high-quality UK legal folding knife that was still tough enough to handle proper use. However the vast majority of UK legal folders are either Swiss Army knives or poor quality Chinese knives. So, figured I'd have to make one myself, and here we are! Thanks! It took a ridiculously long time to make as it was done as historically accurately as possible - forged to finish, no power tools and handle carved by hand. The brass fittings & sheath took almost as long! Quite happy with the final result though.

This came off a big bandsaw at work. It's 2.25" wide but unfortunately the rubber tire is only 1.75". It's aluminum and balanced, with a steel hub press fit into about a 5" hole. I don't have the bearings that go with the hub and you would most likely want to remove the hub and machine a smaller one with sealed bearings. This would make an awesome contact wheel with a little work. Free to anyone who can pick it up from Dublin, CA.

It wouldn't hurt it visually to have a bit of a facet on each face but still leave the edges rounded. You could take 0.075" of each face that way.

Josh, I’m enjoying this thread… Fly swatter and all……. That made me laugh….. I took a photography class at Peters Valley from a guy named Bobby Hanson…… He did professional craft photos… He taught me the value of a tri pod…. And putting hands behind your back …..and then study the shot you are taking….. checking for fly swatters and such… he was a fun and talked about holding the camera and “shooting hot” and showed examples of objects showing up in photos he had taken quickly…..

I really like that you rounded the face of the scales a bit. I think that flows much better than a slab-sided coffin handle would have.

Thanks for sharing such great experience

According to the book, it was made around 1914. It's a three-piece anvil: Cast mild steel base, forged mild steel body and horn, and high carbon steel face, all forge-welded together. Trentons are generally very good anvils.

Joel, I’ve had on hand two wrought iron bundles and one is more refined wrought as in this knife pictured. You can let it sit in ferric longer than you’d think, can’t tell you how long but just keep it in an check it as you go. My other bundle does really nice topography Ive used Birchwood Casey before, more recently Vans, (which I liked) and I just started Mark Lee’s Express Blue, still experimenting though, as the directions are quite detailed to produce the equivalent of hot blue. Gary LT

After I posted the whittling knife last week I had some interest from a wood carver so after a bit of consultation I have got two blades ready for him. I have them ready for handles as they will be left with the belt finish for an industrial look. The upper one is the primery whittler with 2 1/4 in blade and a bull nose for bulk removal with the lower detail whittler has an 1 1/4 in blade with finer point to take care of the finishing.

Working on more little folders. Decided to make it easier on myself and actually double-check the measurements with a scribe and compass. Kind of a bad angle, but the top and bottom have to be parallel, and the end of the tang has to be at 90 degrees. The distance from the pivot has to be the same on all three surfaces, +/- 0.0005 inches / 0.013 mm, if you want the backspring to be in the same position at open, closed, and half-stop. From this point you have some leeway on the edge side of the tang, and you need to round the corners or it won't snap to position, and the half-stop side needs to be hollowed in the middle, but you get the idea. Here's the whole blade. I scribed the circle on both sides to make sure I wasn't getting any wonkiness by filing out of level.

Thanks for sharing that Garry. There as some truly amazing pieces in that video. Man, I gotta get over to Italy sometime.

Birchwood Casey cold blue paste. Not the liquid. It comes in a tube. These pieces were also etched in ferric before bluing. That brings the grain up.

Thumbs up. I like that it's blown, cast refractory and flame entering at somewhat of a tangent. Alan is correct, it can be built for less money but for a plug and play production forge it is way ahead of most and has what I would build into one.

Your orcs are fancy! I like it.

And the core starts to manifest itself under the grind. I will get some crystalic activity from the cladding too, I think, after the quench.

It's alive and heats up much faster than my modified copper/enamel kiln.

Nice! That came out really well......hope everything else does too!

This weekend I managed to fit the handle scales, rough shape the guard, HT the fittings, and profile the handle to 400 grit. Later this week, I will shape the handle and etch the frame and spacers. The fittings after HT. Dry fit the handle with spacer package Dry fit the handle with the guard I really need to pay more attention to what is behind the subject in the photo. That old sock sticking out of the orange bucket isn't doing me any favors here.

Where was I? It's been crazy lately, but I did get to work on a few items in the shop this weekend. I made a lot of adjustments to the handle and started thinking about embellishments. There's something about large smooth faces that irks me. So, I decided to do some Vendel period oculi carvings in that ivory. After making a little tool out of a scrap piece of 3/16" round rod, I laid out the positions and cut them with the tool in a hand rill. Smeared over the blue tape with some Fiebing's antique finish And removed the tape.

Great to see you and everyone else still in the fight. I've been so tangled up in keeping the company afloat due to Covid I haven't put hammer to anvil in a very long time. Feel like I'm losing a part of my soul. Thanks for the inspiration.