KPeacock

I ordered some satanite about a month or so ago and the whole transaction went smoothly.

That's a nice looking knife. I'm all about jumping in feet first when making knives, but I've also ruined quite a few by biting off more than I can chew. Your old man is probably trying to keep you working on smaller knives so you can work your way up to a bowie. It's a shame to put so much work into such a large blade to have the darn thing shatter on you when you quench it. Keep up the good work

I'm not a sword guy, but I like this one. This has enough going on with it to be very aesthetic, but simple enough to have a looks that seems to me to fit a useful battle weapon. I can't imagine facing weapons like this on the battlefield.

Nice work. I'm no fan of the sgians...I think because of their shape. Something about how much larger the handle is than the knife. I realize that this is the "right way" to make them, but to my eye it just doesn't look quite right. At any rate, I can certainly appreciate some nice wood work. Great work on the carving. As for the bowie, I really like the look of the rough antler handles. I don;t know why I like that so much, but to me that just says "This is 'Merica." Regardless of my personal knife shape affinities, both of these look like great knives. Thanks for sharing.

That method will work, but it will smell awful when you burn the tang in. I've done it that way once....once mind you. I decided to never dothat again. Now, I drill an approximaty hole and then use a scraper/saw type of tool to slowly scrape away and make the hole bigger.

This truly is sad. Many folks grow up in the city and do not have the access to tools that I grew up with. I learned the usefulness and the responsibility of having a knife at a very young age. Many folks don;t get that chance and the scouts are a great way for city folks to learn a bit about the outdoors, not to mention service to the community. It will be a sad day when they ban knives from the scouts. Personally, I will not be without a knife. I carry them to work, to the soccer pitch, in the tackle box, in the glove box, on the tractor, at the tavern, hiking...etc. you get the idea. Kives saving lives is not a hypothetical. It's a reality. When I was in high school, I worked as a student athletic trainer. While at a softball game with the head trainer, I saw a knife save a life. One of the young ladies took a softball to the throat area and was unable to breath. without a trachiotomy, it's very likely she would have died. Since med kits do not contain surgical gear, the head trainer quickly disinfected his pocket knife and made a small incision that he held open with a Bic pen tube. Clearly this is not the ideal way to deal with the problem, but it worked and that young lady was very grateful. I recognize that this is a rarity...a one in a million chance...my mom told me I was one in a million. what is I was THAT one in a million. I've had to leave a knife or two at TSA checkpoints, but thats alright with me. I just buy another cheap one when I get to the destination airport. when It's time to fly home, I just give it to the first homeless person I see on the way to the airport. You can make folks pretty darn happy by giving them a knife.

at 4 months into it, mine were not that pretty. Fortunately, a knife need not be pretty to cut well :-)

Wade, I really like the look of that steel. I know many smiths don't care to share their secrets, which I completely understand. I'd love to know how you antiqued the steel. I'm not sure why I like that look so much, but I'd like to try it. If you don't mind sharing your method, I'd sure appreciate a quick walk through of the process. If you'd rather not share, I certainly understand and will not be offended. Thanks, Kris

It sure looks a lot better than the knife I carried at 8yrs old.

Mike hit the nail on the head. He was nice enough to invite me down to his shop last year and I learned more in a few hour of watching than I could have in a few weeks of wasting fuel, steel and time. When it's all said and done, you still have to do it yourself to really learn it, but you sure can get a head start by watching some folks that know what they are doing. As for making damascus without fancy tools, you sure can. I make all of my damascus, whether it be cable to differeing steels, with nothing more than an anvil and an assorment of hammers. I did build a small press, but I really only use that to squish down round stock.

Serge, that's exactly what I had in mind. I showed my mife a pic of it last night and she liked it as well. Trust me, that is quite a compliment. She thinks my forge, tools, and knives are all part of some silly hobby. Why make a knife when you can buy one, right? She just doesn't understand :-/

Nice looking knife Serge! I've got four or 5 billets from early on in my forge welding that have small voids like that. I've never made anything out of them yet, but I plan to use the steel in some of my "box welded" billets. I'm not sure how much strength is lost with the small voids. I reckon not very much, but I'd be upset if I put a bunch of effort into making a nice knife and had it break on me. I don;t usually care for knives that are all steel, but this one looks pretty good to me.

Welding gloves...I weld almost on a daily basis and typicaly only wear a glove on my left hand (I'm right handed) to protect my skin as I'm holding small pieces in place. My Left glove is pretty well worn to fit my hand very comfortably. When forging, I weld a piece of 1.2" rebar to the billet and use my left hand to hold the piece in place and my right hand to strike it. I generally stay gloved on my left hand and keepthe right hand ungloved, but when forge welding, the radiation off of the yellow steel is a bit too much for me to comfortably deal with, so I glove both hands. When running a press, I glove the right and leave the left ungloved to better work the controlls of my mini-press. It isn;t ideal to be switching back and forth with the gloves, but it works acceptably well for me. I also keep a spray bottle of water near the forge. i use this to spray onto the rebar to keep it cool every now and again.

Greg, I think you'll find that many of the folks on this board, and in this line of work/hobby, are very open to sharing experiences and knowledge. The downside to simply trusting everything you hear/see is that you don;t get to learn from mistakes. I know it's frustrating when a knife breaks in a quench, or you burn a piece of steel, or you HIT a weld instead of tapping it, but these experiences are what makes you better at what you do. I'd recommend trying a few bilelts first, and then going to see someone else do it their way. this way you get a chance to learn on your own and can still benefit from the experience of others.

I'm simply heating and tapping with a light mallet. then heating and tapping again. I repeat until I feel it's pretty secure and then flip the whole stack over and try the other side. I worry about the firebrick absorbing too much heat and making a poor weld on the bottom of the stack.

I've seen billets welded up with any thicknesses of steels. the 15N20 is almost exclusivly found in sheet form, so you're limited to rather this strips. Changing the thicknesses of the other steel (1080 in your case) will increase the amount of darkened steel after the etch. Ultimately, it's all about what kind of pattern you're looking for.

Just yesterday I tried this so called "draw filing." I was pretty sure I knew how to use a file before, but it's amazing how mcuh steel you can remove when draw filing, yet it's much more controlled than a grinder....and by grinder I'm referring to any of my angle grinders. I'm excited to see what you;ve got in the works.

know, that no glove that has the dexterity needed will make you invincible. There are knives that will protect you a fair bit. I've been lucky so fr i nthat I've never seriously cut myself while making knives, but I have had to suture up my hands/arms a few times as a result of impatience or plain old stupidity. Something you may, or may not have considered is a filleting glove. these are available at any store that sells fishing poles and is intended to prevent cuts from fillet knives. I would imagine you CAN cut through them, but as I recall, they were pretty easy to work with. I haven't used one about 15 or 20 years, but I remember them as not being too restrictive. It might be a cheap solution for you.

Alan, -I know for a fact that i overheated the to front 12-1/3 of the blade while waiting for the back part of the blade to come up to tem. this i can avoid in the future and I consider it a lesson learned. -the edge is a little bit thinner than anything I've tried before (trying to save time in finished a hardened blade). Once again, lesson learned and thanks for pointing it out. -Thanks for the infor regarding the warp. I'll keep it in mind next time I try something like this and hopefully I can correct it. P.Abrera, I'm not sure how it slipped my mind, but you're quite correct on the reverse grind. Such a foolish mistake to make. Now, I'm almost glad it didn't work out for me :-)

Serge, I'd be happy to make some cable up for you. The cable I've got is 1.5" high carbon, and unused. All I've had to do to is is clean the grease (to prevent rusting) off of it and weld it up. It welds together very easily. If you need it quick, I can weld some up tonight and get it out in the mail tomorrow. I would be more convenient for me to wait until Tuesday to send it, but it doesn't matter that much. What were you thinking of by way of a trade? Kris

Dave, Thanks for the advice. I've had great success with canola oil in the past and will revert to that. I figured I might just as well take a gamble and see what happens. If I got lucky...great. If I failed, well, at least I know to be more cautious in the future. Fortunately, I've got plenty of W2 to play with, and this blade is thick enough that I can cut off the cracked portions and rework it into just about anything I would ever have a need for. Next time, I'll get my forge up to temp and turn down the burner. I should be able to head the blade more evenly this way. I'll also be heating it into a tube within the forge to even the heating out a bit more. Thanks again for your advice

how finely powdered is "powderedsteel?" I've been saving the cutting from steels when I run them through the bandsaw. I was planning on using them as a filer when I box weld all of my random bits of dmascus, 1095, 5160, W2...etc. Will this end up being too coarse?

This is the first blade I've made out of Don Hanson's W2. I didn't want to put a whole lot of time into it just in case I screwed it up....and I'm, glad I didn't. This started out as 2.25" round stock and I cut off about 1.25" of it. I heated and pounded it until it was essentially square stock with a thickness of about 1/4" and a width of 1-1/4". I also forged in a bit of a tang with similar thickness but a decreased width so i could slide a guard onto it. I filed the most basic of edges into this. It's a flat grind with no curves whatsoever. This is a very angular knife inspired by the work of Serge, and also some of the knives made by C.R.K.T. At any rate, this was supposed to be ready to go with a red kydex sheath and red 550 cord wrapping, but it cracked in the quench. I normalized three times, as is standard practice. I applied satanite to the spine and both sides to induce a hamon (my first genuine attempt at it.) Two days later, after the clay was plenty dry, I heated it up and stuck it in some hot water to quench. I couldn't tell for sure, but I thought I heard that tiny little "ping" sound of the metal failing. After tempering at 425 for an hour, I let it cool and cleaned it up a bit so I could see the cracks. I stuck it in the vise to try and break it at the largest crack I saw. It did break, but not at the crack I thought it would. I'm pretty confident the majority of the problem is that I overheated it on the way up to temp before the quench. I started with a cold forge and stuck the knife in there and the front 1/2 was quite a bit hotter than the rear when the rear came up to non-magnetic. Hopefully this was the only serious mistake that I made as its correctable quite easily. Also, the blade warped slightly towards the beveled side when quenched. it's not very significant, but it's there. I wouldn't care about this monor curve as this was build to be a camping knife only. I currently use a USMC kabar when camping, but considering the knives history, I'd rather keep it at home in a display case. If anyone has some suggestions for me, I would appreciate you sharing them with me. Thanks, Kris

Toxonix, I've got a few respirators with replacable filter cartidges. I like to wear it when grinding or doing anying dusty. It inteferes with my safety GOGGLES. with glasses, it's no problem, but I don;t use safety glasses when dealing with metal anymore. They just don't offer enough protection. After seeing some of the comments here, I"m pretty convinced that a full face mask is the way to go to protect the eyes and be able to wear a respirator.

Sweet fancy Moses! That's impressive to say the least. I am having difficulty imagining how that was made. GREAT work.