Joshua States

Where to begin........ In general, all of the knives look like the blades were planned and the handles just happened. The handle design needs more thought and more careful execution than the blade does, because the handle defines how well the user can manipulate the tool. About 6 years ago, a newer maker asked for some guidance on what to make to learn different aspects of this craft. I put up a post with three different projects for beginners to try and copy the techniques in one form or another. That post lasted 3 years and several makers joined in the challenges. With the amount of new makers joining the forum, I'm bumping that thread. Have a look at it.

Time to bump this thread.

Looking good Gary. Bing those with you and do the show & tell. It will be good for you and everyone there

@Alex Middleton you seem to be running this show........ Bummer dude. I was looking forwad to your entry

15N20 is most commonly used and pretty easy to find. Most of the knife steel suppliers sell it. Stainless forge welding is a whole different ball game. You can use low-carbon steel or wrought iron (the latter is difficult to find) and achieve a similar color contrast, but it will be nowhere near the contrast you get with 1084/1095 and 15N20. It's the nickel content that stays bright silver. Somewhere in the pinned lists of threads is a thread about suppliers and where to buy stuff. As for getting higher layer counts by hand hammering, Alan gave you the skinny. This idea is basically taking 5-7 layers of steel in alternating composition, and welding them together into a bar. Make 5 of these bars. Now grind the mating faces smooth and stack the 5 bars on top of each other. Now weld the 5 bars together. Or, make 6 bars and weld three of them together, weld the other three together and then weld the two resulting bars to each other. You should now have a single billet of 25-35 layers. Cut it into 3 pieces, stack them up and weld them together. This keeps the number of layer welds small and easier to accomplish by hand. It sounds easier than it is, but it's totally doable.

Very nice! Yes that wood is fantastic. Care to share where you got it?

So the list is down to 9 people, there's 4 days left until the due date, and only 6 people have started build threads, with 5 showing progress. Who needs more time to do this?

@Emery White as you can see from Aiden's formidable reply, there is an extraordinary amount of variables to this knife making thing. So much to consider and reconsider. As far as adjusting those grooves goes, there is more than one way to skin that cat. I would lock either the blade or the handle in a vice. I have several vices around the shop in various orientations (one can never have too many vices in the shop!), including a Panavice that I do a lot of handle work on. Once I had the knife securely locked in a vice, I would take the appropriately sized round file, and working very slowly and deliberately, with both hands on the file (one at each end) gradually straighten out those grooves. This is tedious and stressful, but it will certainly teach you to get it right before you glue up the next one!

I decided a long time ago that this type of thinking was detrimental to my business and counteractive to my basic philosophy of life. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that beautiful objects cannot be used for any purpose, when designed to do that purpose. why does my hunting knife have to lack extraordinay aesthetics?

Vey nice work, (not that I expect less fom you!) We used to make leaf motif towel bars and hooks as well in the early years. Always sold well too. The brass brush technique is a nice highlight. I remember always having trouble knowing when to stop. It has a way of not being very visible at the black heat. Then it cools and pops out.

I spent this weekend finishing up a crucible furnace and a tall vertical HT forge. I tinkered around with that big well bladder forge I started a year ago and decided it was too big and would use way too much gas to get to heat. So I decided to make one out of an old 100 lb. propane bottle. The burner is a 1" pipe venturi style. I fogot to get photos of the cucible furnace while running, but here is a short video to both of them in operation. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kqnBYNjPhePiiYkFv1igL7KwWaOx9wHu/view?usp=sharing I still have about a 200*F differential between the top and bottom of the sword forge that I need to figure out. The crucube furnace has trouble getting above 1220*C and I need to get it to about 1550.

I spent this weekend working on the Crucble furnace and the sword HT forge. Got them both running and test fired. Still some work to do as neither one got hot enough.

This And this Sometimes we do things we probably shouldn't have done, and we learn a hard lesson. I would never forge on 1/8" flat stock. That's already at my final desired thickness, So it gives me nowhere to go. I have used 1/8" stock for knives (pocket folders, kitchen knives, and some small skinners) but it was always done by pure stock removal.

Dang man. I don't know how I missed the micro-mosaic thread, but the link you posted should be this one. That is one extremely nice little knife. The pattern is a thing of beauty and I especially love the jigged bone scales. What a great way to re-enter!

All I can say, is if I had made that, I would be ecstatic.