HammarBear - Forging Updates - 25 March 2020

I met up with Kody again to do some forging today, and I remembered my camera this time. I did forget a ton of other things though. Various files, and some odds and end I meant to bring to Kody. But anyway, A bit of info on the forge. It's made by NC Tool company. The closest one they have on there site to this is this one.

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I started a new knife today, using a dulled Ferriers rasp. I started out by forging the rasp down from 2" wide to about 1.25" wide, and then forged out the knife blade profile. I've got a ton more work yet to do on this one, but it's coming along.

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I also did a bit of work on a Short Sword I started a while ago. The blade was quite wavy and had inconsistent thickness. I straightened it out and cleaned up the edges.

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But, as you can see from this view, there is still a bit of a wave in the blade. It shouldn't be hard to fix this, though.

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As these knives are meant to be used as general use, hunting, maybe cutting food, when we harden them, we don't want to use an oil that will leech poison into what it cuts. So, rather than petrolium-based oil, I've opted to use Vegetable Oil.

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I picked up 2 gallons of this, in the form of 4 half-gallons. And, apparently, the knives are Gluten Free still...and Heart Healthy...so there's that.

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2 Gallons of oil didn't add much to a 5-gallon bucket, but we made do. The weird thing is that as the knives quench, it smelled like fried fish. The oil did flash a bit, and it let off alot of smoke, but it cooled the blade so much slower than water, and it seems to be a much more even quench.

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Kody was working on his rasp blade a bit more. Using a blade that Will Stelter made on the Alec Steele channel as a reference, Kody drilled 5 holes for retaining pins for the scales he'll use for the handle.

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A bit of filing to prep for hardening the blade.

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This is where the blade ended up at the end of the forging session. Kody wants this a bit more refined while it's still soft enough to work, so there is a ton of wet sanding in Kody's future.

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On a side note, I've been using a pair of extended Needle-Nose Locking Pliers from Harbor Freight to hold the steel as I forge, as well as putting it into, and removing from the forge. It's safe to say I've ruined this pair, but they were cheap.

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I'm quite pleased with how my blade (On the left) came out after the first day of forging. There's still a ton of work left to go on it, but that's all part of the fun. It inadvertently turned into a larger version of Kody's knife....odd...

Anyway, that'll do it for now.
Thanks for reading. More to come soon,

-Phil