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Description

This is my first hand forged knife- hopefully the first of many!

Actually, I didn't intend to make it at the start of the day. I was making something small as a christmas gift for our family's christmas eve bingo game, but that failed and I found a knife sized piece of barstock. Happy accident!!!

It's a stag-antler mounted, hidden tang seax made of mystery steel, something like medium carbon if I read the spark test correctly.

The blade geometry is surprisingly good despite me hammering the bevels too shallow and thinning the blade pretty early in forging. It has a convex grind- my favorite type!

For a bolster I used some mild steel from an old grill, and a piece of leather. It contours to the shape of the antler, but does have a minimal guard on the bottom.

For heat treat, I normalized once, quenched it in canola oil, then baked it at 400 for an hour. Seems to have hardened up, but mystery steel is mystery steel so who knows if it will retain an edge.

It's full of little first-timer imperfections. Mostly just a few errant hammer blows that could come out in the grind. The spine doesn't quite agree with the line the handle is making, but you don't really notice when using the knife. The grinder I use is 4x36, and favors one side so I couldn't get the edge all the way sharp, or the blade all the way polished because it had already been mounted in the handle. Live and learn, right?

Description

This is my first hand forged knife- hopefully the first of many!

Actually, I didn't intend to make it at the start of the day. I was making something small as a christmas gift for our family's christmas eve bingo game, but that failed and I found a knife sized piece of barstock. Happy accident!!!

It's a stag-antler mounted, hidden tang seax made of mystery steel, something like medium carbon if I read the spark test correctly.

The blade geometry is surprisingly good despite me hammering the bevels too shallow and thinning the blade pretty early in forging. It has a convex grind- my favorite type!

For a bolster I used some mild steel from an old grill, and a piece of leather. It contours to the shape of the antler, but does have a minimal guard on the bottom.

For heat treat, I normalized once, quenched it in canola oil, then baked it at 400 for an hour. Seems to have hardened up, but mystery steel is mystery steel so who knows if it will retain an edge.

It's full of little first-timer imperfections. Mostly just a few errant hammer blows that could come out in the grind. The spine doesn't quite agree with the line the handle is making, but you don't really notice when using the knife. The grinder I use is 4x36, and favors one side so I couldn't get the edge all the way sharp, or the blade all the way polished because it had already been mounted in the handle. Live and learn, right?