Making A Forged Knife.

[bldsmith]

This is a project that I was involved with a few years ago. I was a pretty special one as it honored a friends Uncle who served in the Army during the battle of Attu Island during WWII.
I was on one of the knife forums one day and one of the makers was asking if anyone would be interested in working on this project. I volunteered being I had a personal connection also. I was stationed on Adak Island while in the Navy. Adak was were the attack was launched to reclaim Attu from the invading Japanese. Attu was the only US held soil on which the a battle was actually fought.
This is a rather long process and will post a couple of pages a day over the next week or so. Since the maker who wanted to do this project only did stock removal at the time, he needed someone to do the forging. I love forging and decided I would help out. What was going to happen is Andy, the originator of the project, was going to source some materials from Attu to use in the making of the knife. He contacted the US dept of interior and asked permission to acquire some artifact from the island. Permission was granted with a strict requirement that any unused material would be returned to the island. Andy then contacted the Commanding Officer in charge of the Coast Guard LORAN on Attu requesting some artifacts. Specifically some steel. We received a package of material a few weeks later. An exploded ordinance projectile and a rack of truck springs.

Well after a little research and testing we discovered the material would work for a knife blade and I got started.
Talk about pucker factor! This material could not be replaced. I could not screw this up!! So putting the shell into the bandsaw was nerve racking.

Shell cut into workable pieces.

The disc form the base of the shell was saved to use for a display stand.

Now into the forge.

Now were cooking.

That's Fahrenheit folks.

 

[bldsmith]

Here are some of the rough forged and finished bars of the shell.

another pile. The long bars are the springs.

Next the bars are assembled to create the billet for the blade. L-R Spring steel, shell steel and some thin nickle bearing stock to create a little contrast.

Billet stacked and ready for sides. I weld sides on the billet to create a oxygen free welding environment.

Billet in the forge. Sides welded on and a re-bar handle to make it easier to work with.

That will have to do for today. I will post more tomorrow.

 

[FrankT]

This is gonna be great, I can tell that for sure!

 

[Homebrewer]

That is a great deal of work already completed on the knife project.
Will be following your progress on the knife honoring the WWII Vet.

Dennis

 

[Oso Grande]

I'm looking forward to seeing more of this.

 

[Chopperdrvr]

I love this thread. I can spend hours chasing videos on you tube of forging and making demascus.

 

[Ratdog68]

This will be a fun thread. Glad to see that you preserved the history of your part of the project.

 

[bldsmith]

There is a lot of work that goes into a forged blade. I can forge a blade in about 20 minutes from bar stock, that is just the beginning. When making Damascus it takes an extra 2 or 3 days to get the bar stock before I even forge the blade. That said, I make very large billets. Sometimes 25lbs. This way I have enough material to make several blades. For this project I wanted enough material to make at least 2 blade just in case. Good thing too as the first blade had some problems. Anyhow on to the forging.

After the billet comes up to temp I let it soak for a good 30-45minutes to ensure the internal temp is equal to the outside. Then onto the mechanical manipulation. Yes I use power tools namely a 45ton press and a 100lb power hammer.

The press

and the Hammer

A bar drawn out for re stacking.

Bar ground and it will be welded up again.

I normally do a 5 stack. I cut the billet into 5 equal sections. This billet began as 21layers. First restack will take it to 105 layers. The next 5 stack will take it to 525 layers. Then I forge the blade out.

 

[Ratdog68]

I was wondering whether you hand hammered the folding/welding... or used the power tools. If I'm grasping my homework correctly, the grinding to clean before restacking lessens contaminations/imperfection in the folds/welds of the steel? You using borax as a flux?

 

[bldsmith]

Patterning the billet.

The draw of damascus steel is the ability to create patterns. As mentioned earlier there are limitless patterns one can create. Each one will be different even if you do exactly the same process. It is like a fingerprint. You can twist, bump, hammer, cut, press, re-stack, and even create mosaic tiles depicting pictures. On this blade I decided to do what is called a ladder pattern. It can be done either by cutting grooves into the drawn billet or pressing them in. Here is what a billet looks like after it has been pressed.

The grooves pressed into the sides disrupt the layers creating the pattern that will look something like this.

This is not the blade used in this project but gives a great representation of a ladder pattern.

Once patterned the blade needs to be forged. Again here is a blade from another project but will let you know what it looks like after forging.

I can and sometimes do forge closer to the final shape. However in damascus it may disrupt the pattern too much. So most of the time I will just forget the rough profile and finish from there.

Unfortunately I did not document the grinding a finishing process on this blade. It is just what is sounds like, grinding bevels, heat treating, then finishing. If there are those who would like a tutorial on heat treating I will do a separate thread. It is the most important step in the knifemaking process. Thus it deserves its own thread.

Here is the finished blade.

And a close up.

 

[bldsmith]

I was wondering whether you hand hammered the folding/welding... or used the power tools. If I'm grasping my homework correctly, the grinding to clean before restacking lessens contaminations/imperfection in the folds/welds of the steel? You using borax as a flux?

RD.

With the process I use "dry welding", Flux is not needed. That is why I weld a box around the billet creating a can. The ends are also welded closed to prevent oxidation. When I use flux it is just for extra protection or I am trying to fix something after the can has been removed. Here is a picture of me removing the sides of a can.

This is actually the Attu billet after the first weld. You can see how clean the area under the can is. If it were forged with flux it would have nasty scale and melted flux making clean up more difficult. I will grind the sides clean so I no longer see any of the layers. Then draw it out and do my re-stack. The main reason I do the dry welding is I get a much better weld. When I take my time and do the dry weld properly I will get a 99% success rate.
More later.

 

[Ratdog68]

If you start with 25lbs of material, what do you end up with (on average) with a completed billet of Damascus?

 

[bldsmith]

Depending on the pattern and how many times I need to re-stack. I lose 50-75%... So on a good day a 25lb billet will end up being 12-13lbs.

 

[bldsmith]

Now lets start on the assembly. Andy will be putting things together. He has all the materials ready to go.

All the material was sourced on Attu or in Alaska. The cartridge cases all came from Attu but the walrus tusk came from mainland AK. The bar is a piece of the shell that will be used for the guard and pommel.

Andy Filing the slot for the guard.

Guard shape scribe slotted and drilled for some special accents.

Final shape of guard

Now for some accents. These are 30-06 cases also found on Attu.

 

[bldsmith]

Next step. Cut the bases off.

Solder them in

Now solder the guard onto the blade.

Next he will make a spacer to go between the guard and handle material. This allows for a more pleasing transition to the handle.
Now one of the pucker factor steps. Cutting the handle material.
Here again there are not second chances. Replacing that tusk could cost as much as $1000. Andy measures a few hundred times and lets it set on the bench until he cinches up his jock strap and makes the cut.

Now a mortise is cut into the handle material. A drill is run down the center and a special scraper is used to carefully cut the hole for the tang of the blade. It does not need to be perfect but pretty close. A lot of trial fitting until you get this. A perfect fit up.

 

[bldsmith]

Now working on the pommel/butt-cap. Using the last piece of the shell Andy shaped the pommel. The piece of brass is there as he will be using it in the next step.

Here is a satellite view of Attu. Under it is a relief he carved in wax.

Making a mold

Soldered to the pommel.

And on the finished handle.

 

[bldsmith]

Here are a couple shots of the finished knife before the final artist gets involved.

It is pretty hard to capture the damascus pattern the way I used to finish it. Now I can make it really pop.

Initially we had planned on having an engraver do some work on the blank areas of metal. However he claimed it was too hard so he declined the job. However a scrimshander offered his services and he did some incredible work on the ivory.

 

[bldsmith]

Richard Hutchings is the scrimshaw artist. He did all the work depicting the island and landing. Here is the finished knife that was raffled off. The proceeds went to the WWII veterans memorial fund, a little over $2000. THis project took almost 5 years to come to fruition. A long time to wait but well worth the effort.

Thanks for looking. If anyone would like some additional info let me know. I can work up a tutorial.

 

[FrankT]

WOW, that is just beautiful and a piece of Art!

 

[Chopperdrvr]

That's and incredible piece of art. I don't know what else to say.