Alan Longmire

The "longer time" thing is as Joel said. It does not, however, mean that if you leave a blade cooking overnight that it will be softer than one cooked for two one-hour cycles. I haven't had enough coffee yet to explain further, hopefully someone else will chime in...

That's what I do with phone pics. Photoshop Elements. It only works if your exposure hasn't totally blown the highlights, though.

That will be a game-changer for sure! Be warned, the learning curve is pretty steep on a one-speed grinder. Watch your fingers, in other words.

Hi Jeroen, Do your work colleagues know and appreciate your old-tech hobby? I seem to recall your day job is cutting-edge aerospace tech.

Using the dry ice should be fine for cutting with an angle grinder. 10Kg is enough to fill the tank, but remember CO2 is heavier than air and will escape if there is a low opening. I'd tack the wool with screws, but do you really need wool? Just curious, I have not made large quantities of charcoal.

Everything about Peter is astounding.

Rather than sand, which will flow where you don't want and melt into a nasty mess that sticks to your steel, get a bag of potter's clay. Add a little sand and just enough water that it sticks together, make your fire pot, let dry, and use it. Patch the cracks with more clay. No need for the bricks, now!

I feel sure you can use that ironwood on something else. I have a large pile of offcuts that come in handy for non-handle stuff. Or smaller handle stuff. And that's a nice dovetail/tapered tang!

Looks good! Nice job keeping the eye straight and even on both sides.

Gotcha. That does look like a pre-existing crack where it is darker. You could test the rest by polishing it a bit, then etching. Cracks will show up as fine dark lines.

I meant Elmer's wood glue. It's a little stronger. From what I understand, plain old Titebond is fine, it's the other two formulations that cause rust.

We need a little more info. What steel is it, did it crack because of something you did (hardening, quenching, hitting with a hammer, etc.), or did it break before you got hold of it? I have a machete that broke during use and I wouldn't worry about using the remaining steel because it was a sawtooth-spine Ontario Knife model (they only use 1095) which broke at the root of one of the saw teeth, which is why they tell you not to leave sharp corners on hardened steel. The fact that I was wailing on a six-inch dogwood didn't help, that's some very hard wood.

After spending the day trying to drawfile normalized O-1 with a notable lack of success I am beginning to think Brian might be right. The 1x30 is more of a sharpener than a grinder, but with the right belts (that is the key here) they do move more steel than hand sanding. I am doing the prep work to teach a "knife finishing mostly unplugged" class for my local blacksmith's guild, and have determined that O-1 drill rod is not the steel to use for that. Time to order some W-1 that I know I can get soft enough with primitive equipment. Our shop consists of a coal forge, vise, and hand tools with one 110v outlet (living history farm), so I have to simplify...

Yeah, I would use only Elmer's or hide glue for this. Titebonds 2 and 3 are notorious for causing rust, and apparently some spray adhesives do as well. Didn't know that one.

Being the idiot that I am from time to time, it totally failed to occur to me that you could always temper it down a bit in your own oven. What steel is it?