Doug Lester

I would consider that pattern blade to be more of a British pattern. From what I understand a Germanic seax would have a more rounded spine at the point and more belly on the edge. You could heat the area where the blade and the tang come together and forge the tang down just a little on the edge of the anvil. The shape of the tang looks fine to me. I would forget about any guard or but cap. They're generally not seen. Also remember that the handle can be longer than the tang. Five or six inches would not be out of like and if you take a look at some of the period illustrations of people using eating or working seaxes you might notice that that the handle could be as long as the blade or longer. Larger blades could have handles out to eight or nine inches. If you want to finish that blade as is there's nothing wrong with doing so. It will just be a British pattern. If you do that the spine of the clip is not sharpened or beveled. The clip would probably extend at least a third of the way to the tang. Doug

You might want to look up Complete Metalsmith and get the instructors edition. It will give information on the lost wax method of casting as well as other forms. Doug

The New Jersey Steel Baron, aka Aldo Bruno, has all three of the steels that Vern mentioned. You can go to his site and compare the composition of each. Just be aware that the target assay might not match the actual assay but it will be close. I believe that the 1080 that he has comes in 1" square bar and the 1084 in flat bar. Both will produce a hamon if you want to make one and may do an auto-hamon even if you don't. The 80CrV2 comes in flat bar. The Chromium content will provide better hardenability at a given grain size and the Vanadium will help retard grain grown possibly making it a little more forgiving when it comes to overheating. Anyway, with proper heat cycling, that can be corrected and any of the steels mentioned None of them require a long soak to put the carbon into solution in the iron matrix so they're very compatible with heat treating in a forge. Doug

Unless the kitchen knife was meant for heavy chopping duty like a butcher knife I would take the primary bevel all the way up to the spine. You didn't say how thick the blade was but I would keep it to around 1/8" at the spine for ease of cutting. I can't say that I like the Kirinite scales much, but then I don't like many synthetics. Unless there is a specific reason to use a synthetic I stick with wood. I know that most would not consider wood to be dishwasher compatible but my rule for kitchen knives is to use, wash by hand, and immediately dry. However, all in all, that's good work for only being at it for 9 months. Doug

The thing to remember about coal is that no one actually forges with it. You have to burn it down to coke first. When you start your fire in the forge burn the coal until it stops smoking before you place your steel in the fire. You will also want to pile up more coal around the main fire to burn down to coke that you can move into the fire as you need it. Coal fires also don't need to be as deep as charcoal fires. Not knowing what your charcoal forge looks like it might not be suited to coal. Maybe Allen Longmire will chime in. He forges with coal. Doug

The brass rod test is actually done both ways by different makers. If you do try to drive the blade into a brass rod don't use a hammer. Use a wood mallet or a club. If you were refering to the show from last night, 6/19/18, then I believe that Mr. Knight was hammering the blades into steel bolts; total overkill. I use 1/4" brass rod backed up by a board. Doug

"Very nice lines on that knife. I would be hesitant with something that good looking to work it to death. You might want to make another simpler knife, like no bolster, and do destructive testing on it to see what that steel will do. Doug

More complex steel like 52100 are a little hard to get the best out of without a regulated high temperature oven to use in heat treating. The 80CrV2 is probably not a bad choice from what I've read. From the steel that I have used for a chopper 5160 would also be good. Both the 80CrV2 and the 5160 are easy to heat treat of a gas of solid fuel forge. The 5160 might not hold a edge as well as the 80CrV2 but it might be just a tad tougher and easier to sharpen. Doug

Exceptional is about all I can say. Anything else is just superlative. If you go back to the same bar the edge is forged from at the ricasso you will get a better idea of the hardness of the edge which can also be thrown off by the fact that you are measuring the hardness of two steels. Then again, if the rasps were of a shallow hardening steel, the ricasso probably won't tell you how hard the edge of the blade is. Doug

Great work. They say that you learn more from your mistakes than you do from you r successes but still it hurts to break a blade. Doug

Outstanding as always. Doug

Very nice antler handle. Doug

I would not have thought of wrought over damascus. Great effect. Like everyone else said, the parts all flow together to make one great picture. Doug

When steel companies work up their heat treating data for the alloys that they produce they frequently use 1" cubes. TTT diagrams are arrived at by testing small discs of steel held at a specific temperatures for specific periods of time and then having the conversion products analysed to see how they changed at a given time point. Everything gets interpreted from that data. Also two testers may come up with slightly different data so what will happen in the real world is just a bit of an educated guess. Doug

Great work! I'm surprised that Steve got steels with that much chromium to stick together. He must be a wizard at controlling the atmosphere in his forge. Doug