Dave Stephens

Really nice lines. Love the curved bolsters w/ the thin spacers. That wood is a trip. When I first saw it I thought it was fossilized bone of some kind. Thanks for posting.

Post a video of it at work! Thanks for sharing.

Looks great!

Pro tip: If you cook your brussel sprouts in coconut oil it makes it easier to slide them off of your plate and into the garbage. Really nice looking knife, Austin. I like the curve of the base of the blade near the bolster. Also, the sweeping curve of the butt of the grip is elegant. Well done.

Good looking W's. As Brian pointed out (and I'm sure you already know this) the end grain is the interesting bit, so the question is how will you get those W's on the surface of the blade and not just a tiny little mosaic at the end of the tang? If you don't want to to the mosaic route, twisting is a good choice. Twist up two bars of this in opposite directions and use them as the center bars for a sword or dagger. It'll produce a nice explosion pattern like this (if you grind into it)

Welcome, Bill! This forum has a ton of info on it. It's been going for years, so you can find nearly anything you're interested in. However, the search engine built into this thing stinks. So here's the trick. Go to google and type site:bladesmithsforum.com "the thing you're looking for" That way Google will search the site for you. Way better results. Omit the quotation marks if you don't want to look for the exact phrase. Luck in the quest! Dave

What a cool blade!

What Alan said.

Seems like a good idea to me. The shop press frame is rated to the 20 ton press already. We know that the "mini" hydraulic press idea works from the long-running thread that Jaron posted. I think Jess has just skipped the step of welding up his own frame for the 20 ton air jack and used a commercially available one. Jess, if I were you I would read through that (very long running thread) that Jaron posted. Some good lessons learned there. I think that small, drawing dies (like 1" round stock) will work better with this sort of staccato (hammer like) pressure. They will

Welcome to the quest! Geoff and Alan make excellent points. RR Spikes are fun and really good practice. Ditto what Alan said re: dull belts. Here's a trick to reduce the amount of wear on the belts. Get a cheap 4" hand held grinder and grind all the black stuff from the forge off before you start grinding. You can also remove a lot of the material with the hand held grinder before going to the belt grinder to set the bevels and polish. Don't worry about only have a 2x42" grinder. That's what I had for many years and it works just fine. 72" belts last a bit longer, but that's real

Very cool! Looks like a fun project!

Thanks guys!

I think it's a great first knife. Much better than my first! If it is a chef's knife, you might consider dropping the point a bit to minimize the rocking necessary for chopping veggies, etc. Also, for aesthetics, I would have rounded the front of the hand slabs in a complimentary radius to the butt of the grip. Keep going! Dave

Yes, you can forge it to shape. Absolutely. Just make sure to not work it too cold. You can get delaminations if you do. Keep it orange heat. Do you know what pattern you have? Keep in mind, if the billet is straight laminate (just stacked, welded, and folded) then you need to actually grind into it to reveal the pattern, so if you forge it very close to shape it will result in a less dramatic pattern. For some patterns, however, you need to forge close to shape. There's actually a lot to cover on this subject. Luck! Dave

Hi everyone. When I was a teen there was an illustration in a Dungeons and Dragons book of a sword that was shooting a lightening bolt, or energy, or something. The drawing showed the sword encased in wavy, crackling energy or magic or something. Here is my attempt to capture that feeling in pattern weld. Minor inclusion near the base of the blade, but . . . meh . . . still looks okay. This is an Oakeshott XII blade, copied pretty exactly from Peter Johnsson's design. I haven't come up with a hilting plan for it yet. Probably bronze fittings and carved black