Cudos to the Sumerians

Wow! I just got done making a knife (huge surprise, I know) but this time I did some honest to gally blacksmithing! I had read about railroad spike knives and have been hankering to do one for a long time. I had even acquired a railroad spike but alas, I had no anvil. Well one of my buddies hooked me up with an anvil on an extended borrow basis and I thought I would give it a whirl.


Well believe it or not Blacksmithing is hard! I know, I know those of you that know me are aware of the tremendous power I can muster in my little chicken arms and are probably thinking, "you mean hard for mere mortals, surely?" ....No hard for me too.


I do not know who it was who first thought to take a piece of hot metal and pound the crap out of it with a rock or something; but it is a good thing it was not me! I would have been like, "Hey Gilgamesh, you know that idea I had about pounding that hot metal with a big ass rock? Yah, it didn't work." Who knows, I could have set mankind back thousands of years!



Luckily when I started this project, I knew that it was possible in theory to shape hot metal with a big hammer. So I didn't let all my early doubts and draw backs phase me to bad. Still if any of you thought hot steel is kind of taffy like, well taffy like it aint! It is more like real tough hard supper, supper, supper hot stuff that you can flatten by just the tinniest of margins even with a humongous hammer and a mighty swing. Even this marginal malleability last only for about ten swings and then you have to throw it back on the forge again.


Well I think the old time forgers probably shaped there blades almost entirely with their hammers (suckers!) I have modern technology on my side luckily and as soon as I had a vaguely blade like shape (and when I say vaguely blade like, I mean it was longer that it was wide and thinner on one side then on the other) I pulled it of the anvil and angle grinded the crap out of it!!

Yessir, I bet that chunk of steel thought it was pretty tough until my buddy Ryobi taught him a thing or two. Well anyway here is the finished project for your review.



This shows it right out of a Temper cycle. The colors are an oxide that forms at heat. The colors can tell you how hot it got and approximately how hard it will be. This is "brownish purple" which means about 500 degrees and a rockwell hardness of about 60. They (various sources) say 62 is good for little knives but to brittle for big knives and for big ones you should shoot for 58. This knife being mediumish I shot for 60. Or rather it turned out about 60 and I was satisfied.



Here it is all cleaned up.

Here is a closer look at the handle.

And here it is with a better looking model. You would be surprised how expensive good looking models are for your merchandise. Luckily I am sleeping with his mother so I got him for some ice cream!

I didn't torch myself but look anyway!

So it seems I have to set myself on fire to get some comments on my blog. A handy trick I will keep in mind should it be needed in the future. However I have made some knives that I am pretty proud of and I thought I'd let you all take a look.

This knife is made of a ferrier file and pieces of Oak venear that I dyed diffrent colors and then glued together. I gave it to Pat for his B-day. I made one other knife like this too but it was thinner and shaped a bit diffrent. It turned out pretty good too but I didn't get any pictures before I gave it away.

This pair of knives are made out of the same ferrier rasp and one has elkhorn and one buck horn. I gave one to one of my buddies who is on the Sniper team with me and one to a nice dispatcher. Almost a shame to break them up.

This little guy is almost an after thought to a larger knife I am making. He is just the last couple of inches from the rasp after the larger rough was cut. It has a Birds eye Maple burl handle and I only hope the bigger knife turns out as well.

Aint she cute?

I might have gone too far.

My new hobby which is tons of fun for me has been quite the hassle for Silvia. I thought that the cost was going to kill her and therefore it. I mean when I started I was buying fifteen dollar files every knife + abrasives + wood +Stain+ miscellaneous expenses+ more miscellaneous expenses.

Since those first couple knives though, I have kept the over head down by trading finished knives for raw materials. (I still pay a lot) but its not ridiculous like before.


I next thought that the time I spent on it would get her goat and kill my hobby. I was kidding myself of course. I think she is glad to get me out of her house making a mess and into the garage making a mess.



I might have finally gone to far though....... I set myself on fire. Don't be to surprised I foresaw the possibility in one of my earlier posts I think. Setting yourself on fire is about as scary as I thought it might be. (you don't even think of stop, drop and roll) Let me walk you through the thought process.........



"Wow my side sure is hot? Wait a second that is WAY to hot! WHOA my shirt is on fire! I need to beat out the flames! OUCH!! beating out the flames pushes the fire onto my side. I need to grab my shirt and pull it away from my body! OWWWW that hurts my hands!! I need to take my shirt OFF! No! bad idea dragging my burning shirt across my face and hair. Maybe I should yell for Silvia! No she'll make fun of me (funny the things you think of) oh good its starting to go out, oh good its out........Silvia is going to be mad.



Now this all took about three seconds to happen and five minutes to type which shows how fast your brain can go. Let me show you a pic montage of the actual events!!







Look at all that safety equipment! How could this have happened??



Now this isn't the first time that I have been hurt. I'm kindof a klutz and knives are sharp. Here is my first picture worthy ouch. I was sharpening a knife and whacked the back of my knuckle. It wasn't very deep but it bled like a son of a gun. Anyway no big deal.

Here is my next ouch. This one was bad and I didn't have time to grab a camera until after the Doc cleaned it up. I was drilling a hole through a knife handle and the drill caught and spun the knife like a razor sharp helicopter blade right through my thumb!! Gross huh? The Doc said that it missed the tendon and something called a joint capsule. The Doc said either one of those things would have been bad news.

Oh well I guess you got to go some kind of way, better a red hot shard of metal to the base of the skull then dying of old age, right?

Just kidding, I'm actually getting a lot better and safer at this. Unfortunately the learning curve is kind of dangerous. I now have a drill press so I don't have to hand drill any more plus I clamp stuff down, I no longer sharpen knives while sleep deprived, and I guess I'll probably be a little more cognisant of flying sparks from now on. Well I have had my blog break and now it is back to the grind, which isn't just a figure of speech.

1 Comment?!!

Ok faithfull readers, I have stumbled across the coolest hobby ever and I only get one comment? (thanks Shay) I have literally given blood, sweat, tears, countless burns, and 12 stiches too my awesome hobby and I need a little positive affermation! Now, I know it isn't all your guys' fault I must shoulder some of the blame cause some of my previous knifes weren't cool enough, but that is no longer the case. This next batch is totally comment worthy, so lets not drop the ball this time.














This one the hilt is made from four alternating layers of brass and alluminum and as I sand them away on the curve it makes the stripe pattern. It was very very hard and made me say bad words.













This one my buddy asked for. he wanted to be able to say, "now thats a knife!" in an Australlian accent.












This one is almost to pretty to use. Mia got in on the action.

More knives anyone?

Here is another skinner. Same design as the little one but this one is a little bigger and has a purple heart and leapord wood handle.

Doing my part to deforest South America. But for real dont worry if they made toothpicks at of these exotic woods they would be a quarter a piece.

Haven't made a double edge since my second knife, thought I'd try again.

This just goes to show that the design doesn't always exactly match the conception.

Cold Hard Steel!

It seems most people's blogs are about their lives and feelings and families whereas my blog tends to be on whatever hobby I am currently fixated on. In keeping with that I present my newest and probably most dangerous hobby, knife making! Ta da!

Here is my first attempt. I made it from a file with an oak handle and brass pins. Files are good cause they are very good quality steel and are already vaguely knife shaped. They are bad because you can't file or drill a file cause they are too hard. So the first thing you need to do is... make fire! Are you seeing where this is appealing to me as a hobby?

So you make your fire and heat the steel up to about 800 F and then let it cool slowly and you have effectively de-tempered your steel and made it soft enough to work with. What good is a soft knife, you ask? I'm glad you brought that up. Time to make another fire! And this time a hot one! To put the temper back on you have to heat the steel back up to between 1500 and 1800 F and then quench it in oil. You know it is 1500 F because steel looses it magnatism at that temperature.

Now 1800 F is lung-searingly hot. I can not even describe how hot, although lung-searing is fairly descriptive so maybe I can. The first time I tempered a knife I used my Webber Grill and an air compressor, which I don't think was designed to take that kind of heat because, well because it kind of sagged. Melting a BBQ is no mean feat I assure you! So after that first try I built a forge.

I made my forge out of a brake drum from a school bus, what was left from my melted BBQ, some plumbing pipe, an old army cot, and vacuum cleaner which Silvia had no further use of.

an 1800 F piece of steel is hot enough to flash boil a gallon of dirty motor oil and immediately set it on fire.

After my first knif which a colleague of mine dubbed "the Yellowstone steak knife" I went with something a little more militant with my next attempt.

Not very practical, huh? Well I was still working the kinks out! My next couple of knives were made from welding bar stock because I was tired of spending fifteen bucks for a file and I thought that if I tempered the bar stock it would be OK. After I did a little more reading turns out that this is probably not the case and I made about four knives that prob won't hold an edge very good. Sorry if you are one of the people I gave one of those knives to. Please understand that at the time I gave you the knife it was the very best knife I had made at the time I gave it to you. Although I think I'm getting better with each one I make. In any case none of those knives were the type that would most likely be used on a daily basis anyway and having a durable edge is probably not the highest priority anyhow.

My next three knives I made from some rasps that farriers use to trim horse hooves. I really like using them because they are wider than machinist files so you can incorporate a hand guard in the design, they are good quality, and because I know a way awesome dispatcher who is dating a farrier and can get me them for free once they are dull! If you look, you can see the tell tale file marks (little lines and triangles) on the blade of some of these. I can work them completely out of the metal if I want to but I kind of like them sometimes.

Do you see the lines at the back edge of the blade?

Yes those are fossils I inlaid into the knife handle.

Here is my Latest Knife. I made it from an old skill saw blade. The handle is oak and elk horn with brass pins and I didn't stain or varnish the handle, just sanded it really fine (600 grit) and put some tung oil on it. I think it turned out pretty good.

So there you have it my latest faze. Im still having tons of fun with it and am just giving the knives away when I am done. (except the first two cause they are goofy and not gift worthy) I will probaly stop when it becomes work, I burn myself..or the house down, or Silvia looses patience with my spending. (I just ordered thirty dollars worth of exotic wood online) In the mean time Ill enjoy it while I can.

Random Thoughts

So I was at a movie yesterday when I see this fifteenish year old kid in the bathroom waving his hands in front of a wheel operated paper towel dispenser way longer than it would take anyone who has ever used the old time dispenser to figure out that waving would not be effective method of procuring a paper towel. It made me laugh that I had to step over and spin the little wheel for him and it made me think; something I would have dang near considered a miracle when I was fifteen has become so commonplace that this kid would not of thought to even try spinning the little wheel on the side. It also made me think that if I blog about this, it will sound like a "when I was your age blog" which pretty much says you are old..... I'm old. I know I only made this blog about two sentences when it should of been like five but that is how my random thoughts run in my head, needing very little punctuation inside there.

It snowed the other day in hometown like two and a half feet of the most beautiful sticky building snow you could want. The kind of snow that would keep me out so long my lips would turn blue and it would sting to run your hands under luke warm water. I send Brian out to play which he does but when I suggest building a snow fort or cave he looks at me like its to much work. I got the snow blower out and ran ever decreasing circles till we had a nice big pile and even start to dig out the entrance for him. He seemed excited about it now that he sees the vision and I leave him to the rest only to come out five minutes later and see him lying on his back throwing snow balls up in the air and letting them fall down and hit him in the face. (not that this activity would have been unappealing to me when I was a kid, but there is a fort to make...Hello?) You know when I was a kid (I know, I know) I once buried my trampoline. Buried the entire thing so we could do ground level flips Luke Walker style. Do you know how much work it takes to bury a trampoline? And we only did flips for like five minutes and counted the effort well worth it. I mean work in the pursuit of play was not work it was .....well, it was not work. Do you all remember building a fort? Me and my palls once demolished a chicken coop only to construct what looked like a smaller and more poorly constructed chicken coop but that was our fort! And the planning and the sweating and the talking about what we would do once the fort was up (no girls thank you very much) was the only thing about the whole activity that was fun, cause lets face it hanging out inside a tiny poorly constructed chickencoop isn't all that fun. It's sad in away that Brian and most kids as far as I can tell isn't really into that kind of stuff anymore. I guess that is what the digital age is. Remember when our parents said TV will rot your brains but now TV is the lessor evil when compared to video games and I remember my mom telling me about how when her mom was a kid the little novels was the current evil that parents were trying to wean their kids from. Now it is hard to find books that the kids love to read. I wonder if my grand kid will try to get his kids to play video games instead of wasting time (insert as yet unthought up future kid past time).

I got a new cat. I don't as a rule like cats but Nathan does and I guess the cat is OK if you judge on the curve for cat standards. Here is why I like dogs better.

When you make a sudden move and startle a dog it looks at you like, "what did I do wrong and how can I make it up to you, but in the end I trust you." While when you startle a cat it looks at you like ,"oh crap he is going to kill me, I knew this day would come, but I aint going easy, lets go bitch!" and when you give a dog a treat it looks at you like oh thank you for giving me some of your food while a cat looks at you like, why are you holding my food. And when you forget to feed a dog and it tries to remind you that its hungry by looking excited and spinning and making feints toward its dog dish and when you feed it it is thankful and you can tell it believes you had a really good reason for not feeding him on time. Cats look at you like, "I am fixin to eat something, and I don't want it to be your face but that is only because I am not convinced your face would taste all that good, and you have about thirty seconds to come up with an alternative."

I shot a printer today. I took my inspiration from Chelsea's excellent post about smashing her half a cell phone and one of the references to office space. So when our IT guy came in and switched out our great big printer I asked him if I could keep the old one. He seemed kind of suspicious like I was going to try to sell it on E-bay or something but when I told him I intended to shoot it he was OK with that. So I took the printer out and put fifty rounds of 40 SW into the side of it. What I found out is amazing. If a crazy guy comes to your workplace intending to shoot it up HIDE BEHIND THE PRINTER. I could not believe how well it could stop a bullet. My partner in crime put six rounds of .38 +p into it and it even stopped that. Only when we took out the shotgun and put three, 12 gauge one and half ounce rifled slugs into it did it give up the ghost. Another thing I learned was if you ever plan to shoot a printer you should take out the toner cartridge. I looked like a chimney sweep by the time I was done cleaning up the pieces.

This has been a collection of my random thoughts. Sorry its so poorly written, it is not fun editing random thoughts.