Forging knives

Daniel V

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Hi I’m looking at giving myself a lockdown project.
I’ve been looking for a good hunting knife but I decided “hey let’s make one”
Any advice or pictures to help start me off.
What to do?
Complete beginner at forging.
Knows nothing about the topic.
Please enlighten me or chat on where to start and how?
-Thanks
 
A guy named Wayne Goddard did a book about this exact subject. Wayne Goddard's $50 Knife Shop. Since getting the book may prove challenging at the moment let's see what I recall.
Tools.
A ball peen hammer
Old vice grip pliers
A mill file or two, sandpaper. Or a grinding wheel is a huge plus for shaping if you have one.

Something for an anvil. A chunk of railroad tie bolted to a log end is pretty common. Maybe the anvil side of an old vice, if can use it and not destroy the vice.

Steel.
He liked old lawnmower blades. Leaf springs have high enough carbon too. Simple plain carbon steel. Stay away from stainless for this kind of project.

Heat source. A plain old fire pit will work. Something with forced air is better. He used an old blow drier for bellows. Obviously a gas forge of sorts works too.

Start checking out Youtube. Lots of smiths in simple settings making amazing tools.
 
Last edited:
I forgot, you'll need a quench for it to harden the steel. Do no use water! That will crack your blade.
Use oil. So old frier grease from the kitchen or old motor oil, in a metal bucket or pan. A bread pan fits a knife nicely. Goddard had some crazy mixture of jist about everything as I recall.
 
I forgot, you'll need a quench for it to harden the steel. Do no use water! That will crack your blade.
Use oil. So old frier grease from the kitchen or old motor oil, in a metal bucket or pan. A bread pan fits a knife nicely. Goddard had some crazy mixture of jist about everything as I recall.

What’s a quench
 
The quench is what is used to cool the blade rapidly for heat treament. (Most likely in a movie) When you see a knife, sword, etc heated to a red hot color in the fire then dipped into water or oil, that's a quench. But again, avoid water. Too much of a thermal shock for most steels oil is a much easier quench to use.

In a nut shell, after you get your blade forged to close to finished shape you want to heat it up to just above the temperature where it becomes non magnetic. So a magnet is pretty useful here. Then quickly dip into the quench and leave it. It will be at its hardest at this point. But also brittle. You'll heat it to a lower temperature later to temper it to a lower hardness that is more forgiving and easier to sharpen. This is the really short version of that process.
 
What’s a quench
David, once you have done the forging of your steel from leaf spring etc to as close to your finished shape as you can manage, you will need to normalise it which means getting it to an orrange red heat at about 1600F and letting it cool to black, taking it back up to a red heat (1400f) and letting it cool to black and then heating to light red at about 1200f and again letting it cool. This has a 3 fold purpose in annealing the steel (making it easier to work with file or grinder), releives the stress in the steel from forging and refines the grain to make a better end use knife.
When you have got the blade to your prefered finished profile and filed or ground in the bevels to about 90% finished so that there is still some thickness to the edge so it is not burnt in the heat treat. I leave my blades with an edge about 20 thou thick. Clean up as many of the rough scratches as you can at this stage so it will be easier later when you are doing the finish grinding/filing to the bevels. Drill the holes for your handle pins at this stage, ie when it is soft as left till after HT will have it require carbide drill bits to do so.
For heat treat get yourself a good magnet as the correct temperature to harden the blade (1550F) is when the steel gets to a nice even red heat and is non magnetic, hold it there for a minute or two and then plunge into warm canola oil (about 125-135F) to quench the blade ( cool it to black ) .
Then you need to temper it to take the brittle hard from it so put it in the oven at 400F for 2 hrs. let cool and repeat.
Now you are ready to finish the bevels, clean it all up and put the handles on.
 
One thing to remember is that if you get a bend in the blade at quench, you can retreive this by clamping it to a piece of box steel or angle iron with a shim to bend it the opposite way to half what it has bent and it will come out during the temper. Chack after the first temper cycle. It is not uncommon to have to do this. Do remember that when you do your quench to move the blade up and downn never sideways as this allows for uneven cooling and can contribute to the warping but again sometimes it just bends for no apparent reason.
 
Youtube is your friend as there are litterly hundreds of videos on the many aspects of forging and knifemaking in general
 

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