Knife Making
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2007
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Trip End
Jan 08, 2008
Barrytown,
New Zealand
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Still, I was awake and ready to go, so weset off to the house without too much delay.
Upon arriveal I was presented with a rusty bit of steel, a scratty bit of rough wood and some lumps of brass. This, I was cheerfully told by Steven (who is Barrytown's resident knife-making guru), would be my knife at the end of the day. I will admit that I was a little perplexed - okay, my reaction was "yeah right" but silently of course - but I was also more than a little intrigued. How little I knew!
After a quick safety briefing regarding the dangers of making sharp pointy objects by beating them with hammers and anvils, fire and grinders, we began our ugly duckling transformations, starting with the hot forge (that's the fire bit) and then alternating the hot forge with beating the steel out into shape (that's the hammer and anvil bit). There were onyl two of us undertaking this endeavour today, me, and a thirteen year old boy from Christchurch called Phil, who wanted to be a blacksmith, and who aquitted himself exceptionally well throughout the day.
Beating the red hot steel into shape proved to be immensely theraputic after my disturbed night. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the steel bend into the shape I wanted it, developing a long curve on the knife edge and slimming down to an edge along the blade side, though for a while it did not feel as though I had done much to it at all. Once we had finished our hot forge, we moved onto the cold forge, which, quite simply, involved chucking the steel into a handy puddle (West coast rain is useful for something) and leaving it there to cool. Then it was time for biscuits.
Once the steel had cooled, we had to cut the handle to size. This was done by following the line that Steven drew for us, using the high-tech method of a hacksaw. Again, this was immensely theraputic. Next, we had to shine the central section of the blade, as we would not be able to do it once we had attached the handle. This entailed using different rotary sanders to grind away the corroded steel and leave the strong steel underneath clean (and shiny). We moved through three different grades of sandpaper to achieve this. Once we had shined up the central section it was time to afix the brass pieces that made up the very end of the handle, and this was tricky as they had to be very symmetrical, and even with the aid of superglue to hold it in place, this was not an easy feat. I had about three attempts before I got it right. We then drilled fixing pin holes to hold the brass securely in place and dropped brass fixing pins in place that were hammered into a secure position. Next it was time to cut the scratty bit of wood into a hanle shape. More sawing, more price-included threapy, although the jigsaw was a little harder to handle than the hacksaw. I just traced a line on the wood, created by butting the brass up to the wood and tracing around the steel that protruded. We then pinned the wood on in the same way as the brass, but with the ends of the pins bent over so as not to dent the wood with a hammer. These extra bits would be removed in the sanding process as we shaped the handle.
We did some rough sanding of the handle to get it flush with the steel and after rubbing some polysealer into the gaps to seal the blade, we broke for lunch, while steven did some shaping work for us. (We were not allowed to do this as it required using a dust mask because of the polyfiller particles that would be sanded off.)
We played with Steve's throwing axes before lunch, but it was not much fun in the still-pouring rain, so we went inside. After lunch we discovered that our knives looked much more like knives and that it was easy to tell them apart, mine having a much more feminine curve to the blade, where Phil's was quite definately, a more manly, butch looking knife. We now started the delicate task of sanding down the blade, pointing the knife blade down on the sander and running it repeatedly along the grinder to give a further edge to the blade, and to remove any sacrach marks from the steel. It was quite difficult as the downward action had to incorporate a curve or we would lose the smoothness of the edge. Again, despite the sparks, I was not sure I had done anything at the end of the first grade of sanding, but eventually the careful work became visible, and my knife was beginning to get teeth.
We were getting close to the end of the process now, and it was time for wet-sanding. Before this however, we had to cover the handle in masking tape to make sure that the water did not seep onto the wood and cause spotting, which would ruin it. Then, knives always blade down, to protect both you and the handle, we went through the process of wetsanding the blade with three increasinglt fine grades of sandpaper to smooth out any remaining forge marks and to buff up the steel to a bright gleam. There were still some marks left at then end of the process but this is always the case with hand forged blades. It was almost finished. The final step was to seal the handle against water damage, which was done simple by rubbing furniture wax into the wood and leaving it to absorb.
To celebrate our achievements we had carbonated home-made wine (Phil had a soft drink) and it turns out that the stuff is quite leathal. Consequently, four or five glasses later, as i was dropped off at the hostel, I was a little tipsy, which greatly amused the other strayees, especially when I got my knife out. They all agreed that it was very pretty, but that may have been because I was brandishing it slightly...
Still, I had a great day and Steven has said I can go back and make a sword if I want to, which, really, is too good an opportunity to miss!
