Christmas Gift for my little brother

Of my three brothers, two of them have knives and the youngest one hasn't got one yet. The sad part about that is that my youngest brother is the one who gives me the steel I use to make knives. So I think he's waited long enough. This year for Christmas I made a point to finally give him his knife. 

I started a couple blades back in the spring, my hope was to have something finished by mid summer to give to my brother, but I only finished the forging of the blades. About 2 weeks ago I picked up where I left off and finally finished one of the two blades.

Here is the finished knife. 

The steel is spring steel which my brother gave me. I'm not sure of the exact make up of the metal, but it holds an edge well. I used Nickle/Silver for the guard and the handle is made from spalted beech from my parents firewood pile and black walnut from my brothers firewood pile. I made the leather sheath yesterday morning and it was still a little damp when I gave it to him. My sister-in-law, Michelle, helped to sew it up. She did a great job. 

He was thrilled to get it (finally) and I told him to not be afraid to use it. 

Time to fire up the forge and try Forge Welding

Its been a while since I've done some forging and even longer since I've posted anything, so I think its well past time to do something. Since the weather has been quite nice for the last few weeks its given me time to clear out some room around my forge and anvil to make room for more projects. Lately I've been reading up and watching youtube videos about Forge Welding steels. I'd love to do some blades with layered hard and soft steel as well as other things. So, before I jump into that I wanted to do something basic. So I found some steels and cut out about 7 similar sized peices of each. The thickness of these steels were about 1/8" or so. Then I cleaned them up to remove rust and paint. Since this was a practice run I used two peices of the soft steel layered over some high carbon spring steel.

I wrapped the stack with some stainless wire and hoped it would hold long enough. I do have a wire fed welder which was given to me, but I don't have enough power in the garage to run it yet. So I'm hoping the wire will keep the stack together and I'll just have to use tongs to handle it. 

I tried to get the wire fairly tight, but it started to snap off when I twisted it real tight, so like I said, this is the "test piece". 

Next I got it to a nice orange heat. I flipped it a few times to make sure the peice was heated evenly. This was about the time the wires burned off. So I made sure to handle the stack carefully when I moved it.  I pulled it out a couple times to make sure I got enough Borax on it and then got it to a yellow heat. This was some guess work, but I think I got to the right temp, or close enought. So once I got to yellow I pulled it out and just tacked it together with some easy hits with the hammer. It let out a good deal of sparks so I think the temp was right. Just a note - make sure to wear protection from the sparks!  They go everywhere!

 After a few more heats to a nice yellow and some stronger hits with the 3# sledge the stack looked and felt like it was welded together. This pic you can still see the layers, but once it cools I'll grind the edge and have a look inside more. At this point I'm feeling pretty happy with it. 

 

Here is a look at the layers. You can still see the layers of metal, but I don't see any gaps from this edge anyhow. So, I'm pretty happy how it turned out. The next question is what do I do with it? I may keep working it and folding it and see if I can make a blade from it. It will be alot of work without a power hammer, but I'll learn a lot more and it will be more satisfying too. 

Multi-sized Hook Rack

This hook rack used 3 sizes of hooks mounted on an old piece of barn siding. There is a set of small "key hooks" across the top, 3 large coat hooks on the bottom row and between those are 2 medium sized bag hooks. 

The barn wood was hand sanded and then coated with beeswax.