BlackSmithing

I forged a knife today.
And.
It.
Was.
AWESOME!!

My Uncle has been doing forge work for a little bit now.
And since I'm visiting for the week.
I asked if I could learn how to make a knife.

Because like. Forging?! Blacksmithing?! Doing the whole bang bang with the hammer on the iron? Come on! It's cool! :D 

So today.
We spent the day making me a knife. :D 

It started last night, actually with me sketching out a design for my knife on a slab of high carbon steel.

Then today we went out and with a grinder, cut off the larger pieces from the steel before using a sandbelt to do finer sanding and shaping of the piece of steel.

Which admittedly was odd to me.
As I figured you needed to do the whole 'stick the metal into the forge and get it red hot and bang on it with a hammer on an anvil' sort of thing before you did any other tool work.

Possibly if you're making something from scratch you need to do this.

But this blank blade strip didn't need that.
Yet.

I don't know if it ever actually needed it....

But I wanted to do the whole blacksmithing thing with the anvil and the forge. Plus, leave my own mark in the metal. 

So my Uncle showed me how to do it all.
The type of coal to use.
What to look for in the flame coloration.
What to look for when you put the metal in the forge to heat up. 

And then the moment of truth.
Pulling the hot metal out, laying it on the anvil, and hitting it with a hammer. :D 

Since the shape of the knife was already in place from cutting it out earlier.
There wasn't much for me to do. lol. But still. I moved the blade back and forth between anvil and fire three times before my Uncle took over to make sure that the weapon was straight and such. 
Then after normalizing it and such.
We put the false edges on it.
Drilled out holes to fix the handle on.
And went back to the forge to fire it up once more so we could quench the blade in oil and harden it to it's new shape.

Definintely was fun.
The quenching was awesome!
And thankfully my blade didn't warp or have issues.
So woot!!

Then my uncle went ahead and polished up the blade, getting the oil and such off the steel and making it shine. 

^^;; 

In the next day or two we'll shape the handle and fix it to the tong of the blade and sharpen the knife.

But we called it a day for today.

In any case.
My Aunt and Uncle were really impressed with my work.
How I was able to keep the metal mostly straight.
How well I quenched the blade.
Etc.

It was so much fun.
So much.
I loved doing it and can't wait to finish the knife fully. :D

Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi