Joshua States

What? No house elves? Looks great Daniel.

@jheinen, the work faces are all 2" x 3 " (unless you buy the oversized dies). That's plenty for what we do. In 12 years, neither my wife nor I have ever thought we could have used a bigger die face. Even my biggest Damascus billets do not get wider than 2 inches. When you consider that changing a full die set out from flat dies to drawing dies takes about an hour or more, with removal, install, alignment, tightening, I thought it was worth the $. Also something to consider is that sooner or later those dies get worn out. Sooner if you use the hammer a lot. Replacing a set of die tops is roughly half the cost of replacing the whole die.

I suppose you think I should read them too?

We were just using a regular ball peen hammer. You probably got the split because the knife was in a vice and the force of your hammer completely translated into the wood and tang. When you hold the wood and tap the back with a hammer, part of that force moves your hand and everything else. It's not as "hard" on the handle/tang. It's just enough to inch the tang in a little bit further. BTW-I clean my handle out after each heat. Scrape out a little burnt wood with the broach. It probably takes 3-4 times to seat the tang.

I have no idea, I've never tried it that I can remember. Not saying I haven't tried it, just that I cannot remember doing it.

I have been thinking about trying an axe now for a while (like a few years) and have been rereading Jim Austin's posts, Gerald's Wood axe tutorial in the Hammer's Blow, Alan's Bearded Axe WIP, and watching a couple videos (mostly by Jim). This latest post here, got me thinking (always dangerous) and I have an idea I'd like to bandy about. What if you started the split first and located it along the thin side (top) of the bar at one end. Then started to draw that out while simultaneously beveling it down toward the split. This should start to curve the bar downward and produce the beard area (at least in theory). Has anyone ever tried this or think it would work?

Forging practice and control of the hammer/steel interaction is required. Before I forged my first blade, I had probably made a dozen by stock removal and forged hundreds of other items from mild steel to get proficient at what I call the "basic 5 techniques". Drawing, tapering, fullering, rounding and upsetting. The truth be told, everything you need to know to forge a knife, you can learn by making a hook like this that you can sell for $15-$25.

Matthew Parkinson showed me a neat trick about this when I took a class from him on kitchen knives. Put the blade in the vice and push the handle wood onto it. Then loosen the vice and holding the wood in your hand, tap the back of the block lightly. It takes several times, but it works and won't split the block.

This is the best advice anyone can give you.

Probably seems that way because you have never tried it. I've never tried it either and it looks pretty complex to me.

I think you went up another level.

Bill Cosby once said "An American can eat anything, if you give him 2 slices of bread with it"

@AndrewB Does your anvil have a pretty flat and smooth face? If it doesn't, getting a straight blade is going to be tough. If it does, or you have a reasonable facsimile, then get yourself a wooden mallet, or a heavy plastic faced mallet. You could also make yourself, or buy, a flatter or planishing hammer. Straightening a blade (or anything else for that matter) can be easily accomplished by heating it to orange, laying it on a flat surface and hammering the thing straight with a soft hammer. It helps if the soft hammer has a wide flat face. My guess is if you cannot get a knife blade straight, you ain't getting an axe straight either.

I have been rereading a few of the pinned topics on axes ever since I saw Jim Austin's Viking axe demo at the ABANA conference in Salt Lake back in 2016. I bought his video there and have been watching it over and over again. I finally decided to make some of the tooling he uses. I made these from old jackhammer bits. Other than some wire wheel cleanup of scale, these are all as-forged From the left, there is a round vertical mandrel and two bicks. One round and the other flat. The flat one is trapezoidal in cross section. These are Hardy-hole tools. Then there is a round drift, which will probably get cut into three smaller pieces, and two other drifts. One of these is a squat D shape and the other is a more modern shape for a hatchet size. The round mandrel The two bicks. I have done some smoothing with a slack belt and padded disc at 60 grit. The only question I have now, is do I heat treat them?

Buy a set of the dies with the removeable face plates. It makes changing from drawing to flat a lot easier. It's called the "two-part system" on the parts page