My other hobby filling time in isolation. Finished page 8.

[DJ.]

As you may know my daughter was going to be married this summer, and as a wedding gift, I decided to make them matching pattern welded knives. The marriage is now cancelled, but I decided to proceed with the gift, to cheer them up and also to fill the time I now have on my hands.

As most of us are stuck at home at the moment, I thought I would do a thread on making these knives in case it is of interest. I can't guarantee the blades will reach the end of the process, as it is quite possible I will find a flaw in the welding or make a big enough cock up and have to start again from scratch.

I made a forge welded billet of 72 layers of 15n20 (high nickel band saw steel) and a high carbon plain tool steel (sorry I can't remember the grade). I didn't have photos of that stage,but here are a couple of photos of the billet once twisted:

I then forged it onto a hexagonal bar mainly using my flypress:

Once cooled, I ground off the scale and all the grooves:

It is important to remove any deep grooves, as if they are forged into the steel, they can form flaws that only show after the blade is ground out and there is no option but to scrap the blade and start again.

[DJ.]

The next stage was to cut the bar into two. The centre of the bar will have the best twisted pattern, so the blades will come from this section. Some of the tang will be patterned steel, but some will be made from the mild steel strip I welded on as handles. The marker pen shows the area I plan to use as the part that joins the handle. On the upper one this is longer, because that end of the bar was in the vise when I twisted the bar and consequently didn't twist as much as the rest.

Next, I forged these two pieces into knife blanks, this is the fun bit, but any misplaced hammer blows where the blade goes into the handle will be very hard to hide. It is also tricky to get the steel to move just in one direction so the blade edge is lower than the handle. It is easy to end up with something looking like a spatula

I'm not brilliant at forging, but managed to get fairly similar shapes that I can work with and no major cock ups. A blacksmith who taught me said "Always forge thick and then grind thin" as it isn't possible to retrieve the blade if you go too thin early on. Here are the two blades straigth form the forge:

[DJ.]

The next stage was to remove the forge scale with a wire brush in an angle grinder. Then I roughly ground the blade shapes so the were more like I wanted. I then used a hacksaw to cut around the bars where I want the handle to start, and then ground away some of the steel here as it is very difficult to try and forge this step into the blade.

Yesterday, I used to forge to heat the blades and then stamped them with my initials. This is always a tricky step as any misalignment or slip can ruin the blade. After that, I forged the steel that will form the tang thinner and stretched it out to reduce the amoung of grinding and move welded zone well into the handle away from the highly stressed portion when the blade meets the handle.

Here they are covered in scale from the forge:

And here are some photos of them with the scale removed. The pattern in the steel is nicely visible here. I did make a couple of slight mistakes, but nothing too bad:

Next I have to do more grinding so the blades are ready for heat treating where lots can go wrong. I normalized the blades three times after finishing the forging as this makes the steel tougher and reduces the chance of them warping when heat treated, but I'm not going to relax until the blades are hardened and tempered.

I hope someone is finding this of interest

[b33fy]

Great stuff Duncan, looking forward to seeing how they turn out. So much work goes into getting the patterns on the blades, definitely an art imo

[Tony B]

I really fancy having a go at this one day, keep the updates coming Dunc

It’s fascinating stuff....

[Kegco]

Well done Duncan
Didn’t know there was so much involved
Keep it going
My daughter was supposed to of got married on the 5th April but luckily the venue gave her a another date in November, fingers crossed

[nelmo]

Fascinating stuff - keep it going

[leegav]

Brilliant. How did you hear the metal?

[DJ.]

Brilliant. How did you hear the metal?

I now have propane farrier's forge which makes temperature control relatively easy. My old forge was a traditional coke one, but it was very easy to get cold shuts if the steel wasn't evenly heated or end up with a sparkler if I left it in the forge for a few seconds too long!

[DJ.]

Thanks for the interest, I will carry on taking photos