Knife Making

We’ve been watching Forged In Fire as a family. If you’re not already aware, it’s a great show. 4 blacksmiths show up and make knives in just a couple of hours. Typically with steels or techniques they haven’t used before. Then the judges smash their knives into things in an attempt to either break them or “keeeel” a dummy. It’s a great combination of creativity, stress, and violence. Lots of people have probably thought, “That kinda looks like fun”. Well so did I. I’m not very interested in being on the show, I just love making things.

So, I’ve created a home forge. It’s simple. But it seems to work. I ordered some bricks and broke out my little stick welder and came up with a design I thought would be usable and flexible. After a couple of nights and Saturdays, here it is!

Next, I picked up some 1084 steel “blanks” and an inexpensive belt grinder at Harbor Freight. Then I drew some knife shapes until I came up with something I liked the looks of.

That’s just two of many papers with random knife doodles.

Then I marked out a shape on the steel with a Sharpie and went to work with the grinder.

That was my first blade. While I was grinding though, I accidentally took more off of the spine than I meant to. So I decided not to spend time on a nice handle for it. Cord wrapping was enough to test out the blade though. I beat this thing into tree branches and 2x4s and threw it at trees. It’s a beast. The blade holds up wonderfully. I may end up putting a handle on it after all.

Here’s my next attempt. This one worked a little better and I did put a handle on it.

I had some scrap walnut pieces that I used for the handle. I pinned them with some brass rod I had in the shop from something else. The handle is a tad bit small after all. It fits my hand just right, but I have relatively small hands. For future knives, I’ll probably aim for a little more room on the handle. Overall though, it turned out really nice. Hopefully, more to come.