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    Knife Making: a step-by-step guide
    Knife Making: a step-by-step guide
    Knife Making: a step-by-step guide
    Ebook307 pages1 hour

    Knife Making: a step-by-step guide

    By Owen Bush

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Learn how to make beautiful and functional knives With over 250 photographs and detailed step-by-step instructions, Knife Making explains the complete process from how to forge a blade through to making a handle. It draws on the author's many years of practical and teaching experience to include specific advice on how to make a knife safely and how to avoid common pitfalls. Informative and detailed, this book is the perfect companion for bladesmiths.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Crowood Press
    Release dateDec 17, 2024
    ISBN9780719844485
    Knife Making: a step-by-step guide
    Author

    Owen Bush

    OWEN BUSH has been making knives, many of which have been inspired by history and legend, for over 30 years. He is passionate about his craft and forging hot steel, and offers popular courses from his workshop, Bushfire Forge in Kent.

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      Book preview

      Knife Making - Owen Bush

      Half TitleTitle

      CONTENTS

      1Tools of the Bladesmith’s Forge

      2The Bladesmith’s Materials

      3Forging the Blade

      4Grinding the Blade Before Heat Treatment

      5Heat Treatment

      6Grinding the Blade After Heat Treatment

      7Making the Handle

      8Sharpening the Blade

      Index

      CHAPTER 1

      TOOLS OF THE BLADESMITH’S FORGE

      THE FORGE

      The basic tools that the bladesmith uses to shape hot steel into a blade are the forge, the anvil and a hammer.

      We will start by looking at the forge, the means by which fire is used to heat steel to a temperature at which it glows and becomes plastic enough for the smith to forge it into shape.

      At Bushfire Forge, the bladesmithing school I run in south-east London, there are two types of forge installed: solid-fuel forges and gas forges. Both types have advantages over the other, but also their disadvantages.

      The author with hammer, anvil and forge.

      Solid-fuel forges

      Solid-fuel forges that run on fuels such as coke, coal and charcoal tend to run hotter than a gas forge. This means that steel will heat up more quickly in a solid-fuel forge and so it can be brought up to the right temperature for forging in less time than it takes with a gas forge. For example, it may take 30 seconds to heat a piece of steel to forging temperature in a coke forge, but 90 seconds to heat the same bit of steel in a gas forge. This does not sound like a great difference, but that extra minute every time you heat the steel soon adds up to more than a hour or so over a whole day.

      Solid-fuel forge.

      All types of forge that burn fuel produce combustion gases, including the toxic gas carbon monoxide (CO), and I always have one or two CO monitors set up at the correct height in my forge area. It is therefore very important that your forge area is fitted with good extraction and ventilation equipment. A well-designed chimney, for example, should be enough for a solid-fuel forge, but in order to expel smoke and stale air up the chimney it is necessary to ensure that fresh air can enter the forge building to replace it.

      A side blast forge fitted with a water-cooled bosh and tue-iron to regulate how much air is allowed to enter is the mainstay of a modern British industrial forge. A jacket of water surrounding the tue-iron prevents the fire from burning the tue-iron away. I would recommend using a cast-iron, water-cooled tue-iron since these can last for at least half a century if they are treated well and kept topped up with water. A cheaper bosh and tue-iron made from mild steel should last for more than a decade before it eventually rusts away. They are quite easy to make if you are able to fabricate steel. If you do not have the facilities, however, some good-looking fabricated forges are now available online.

      Coke

      I often use a coke forge when demonstrating forging techniques because it means that the steel can be brought up to heat more quickly. The high working temperatures that can be achieved with coke or other solid fuels, however, can also bring problems. The centre of a coke forge reaches a temperature of about 2,200° Celsius and, since most of the steel used for making knife blades burns at around 1,450°C, you have to be very careful when working thin steel in a solid-fuel forge. If your attention wanders or you do not keep moving the steel around, you will inevitably burn your steel.

      You can tell if the steel has burned because the material will spark like a sparkler. When using modern carbon steel this can be a fatal mistake, since it is very risky to incorporate burned steel into a finished knife blade.

      When you heat up a piece of carbon steel, it first becomes red hot and then turns orange. I like to do most of my forging at an orange heat and stop before the steel cools in air to red. As the steel continues to heat up into bright orange and then yellow, the surface starts to look slightly slick, as if it is covered in hot honey. This indicates that the surface is melting and at this point the steel will start to spark. Sparks are a definite indication that the steel is burning, but by then it is already too late just to pull the steel from the fire since they show that the carbon steel is ruined.

      When steel burns it’s like a sparkler.

      If the steel being used to forge a knife has been burned it should be considered as ruined. Remove the whole burnt area and a little more to make sure burnt steel has not been incorporated into a finished piece. In practice this often means starting afresh with a new piece of steel.

      If you have some experience forging with mild steel or wrought iron it is worth remembering that carbon steel and mild steel behave quite differently at high temperature. Mild steel is a lot more forgiving than carbon steel. You can often get away with burning mild steel or wrought iron as they will hammer weld (forge weld) back together quite happily without any real detriment to their structure. This is not the case with carbon steel. When it is brought near burning temperature it undergoes changes that have a detrimental effect on its structure, since the loss of some of its carbon as it burns will affect the steel’s hardenability and how it performs as a blade.

      An even more important factor is that as carbon steel overheats its grain becomes more pronounced. This is known as blown grain. As the steel nears its burning point, this happens to such an extent that oxygen from the fire starts to combine with the steel. As the temperature increases it can oxidise the grain boundaries of the steel. This oxidation turns the steel to something resembling mushy yellow hot cottage cheese. (For more information about grain growth, see Chapter 5.) If you were to hammer weld the steel back together at this temperature it would most likely weld up, provided you did it correctly, but you would still have oxygen ingress at the grain boundaries of the steel. This means you would be forging oxidised steel into your blade with the almost inevitable result that at some point this internal oxidation would cause the blade to crack.

      It is far safer to assume that if carbon steel is heated to the point of burning it is ruined, especially when making something such as a knife, which relies so much on the integrity of the materials from which it is made.

      It is worth remembering that solid-fuel forges can be very oxidising in front of the air blast or tue-iron.

      A solid-fuel fire is split into three zones. The area in front of the air blast is marked by an excess of oxygen from the air coming into the forge. Since this area is very oxidising it is also the hottest part of the forge, so you should avoid digging the blade into this area of the fire or you will most certainly burn it.

      The temperature within a solid-fuel forge varies depending on the proportion of air being burned by the fuel.

      Around the oxidising area is a neutral zone, where the incoming air is equal to the burning fuel. Around the neutral zone is a reducing zone where the hot fuel does not get enough air to burn completely. Above the reducing zone there is another oxidising zone where the burning fuel mixes with the air surrounding the forge.

      If possible the steel should always be placed in the neutral or reducing zones of the fire. In practice this means having the steel just under the surface of the burning fuel and constantly making sure that you are rotating the steel to get it evenly hot.

      If possible the blade should be placed in the fire just under the coals.

      You really can’t leave a knife blade in a coke forge for any length of time. Instead you have to pay full attention to the temperature of the steel and the fire as long as the blade is in the fire.

      Coal

      Regulations concerning smoke-free zones mean that the option of burning coal is out of the question in many areas due to the large amount of acrid smoke it produces. Many smiths who live in areas where these regulations do not apply, however, choose to use it. If you find yourself in a similar situation it may be a suitable fuel for your needs. Make sure that a smithing coal is chosen that it is very low in sulphur. Some coal burns very brightly and its bright white glare can temporarily blind you, so be careful not to look at the fire for too long when burning coal. You will often get a much better idea about the temperature of the steel by quickly removing it from the fire and looking at it

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