Welcome to another epsiode of Forge Diaries.
Today, we are learning from mistakes and turn a broken spear into a pretty knife.
As you know I have been working on recreating old artifacts.
Not all experiments are successful though and my progress on the wolf's tooth spear
had a little set back.
The coal fire was quite hot and in a moment of inattention I melted the high-carbon steel
and lost half of the spear.
Since I was still interested in checking out the wolf's tooth pattern, I decided to turn
the spear into a knife.
I had a bar of partly twisted pattern-welded rod as well as another bar of wrought iron.
Forge welding these together with the half spear would make a beautiful looking knife.
Prior to forge welding, I need to clean up the broken spear.
For the weld to be successful, the bars need to be square to each other, straight and clean.
When clamping them, the bars bowed out; meaning they would do the same when hit by a hammer.
So something was wrong.
Upon further inspection, I noticed that the wrought iron was forged to a diamond shape
which needs to be corrected.
By hitting the bar on the long diagonal, I can forge the wrought iron back to square.
A quick visual inspection confirms that I should be good to go.
This time around the bars clamp together nicely indicating that they are mostly square.
I tag weld both sides to keep them together while heating up in the forge.
With all pattern welded work, there are two contradicting objectices when forge welding.
Make the pieces stick together but don't stretch them out.
So, I hit them hard enough to squeeze out the liquid flux but no harder than that.
After the piece is hot enough, I coat it with anhydrous borax which will keep the surface
clean.
One tag weld broke and I need to move the bar back into place with the hammer.
Here you can see to what I refer as light taps with the power hammer.
After two welding passed the bars stick together and it's time to forge in the tang.
I am using a blacksmith's helper to separate the material.
To create an even transition, I flip the piece after three hammer blows and hit it three
more times.
You may have seen that the bars were not all of equal lenght but they get welded into one
piece as I draw out the tang.
Now that the tang has been established, the knife tip needs to be prepared.
For the pattern to follow along the knife's edge, I am cutting a reverse tip.
Looking at the surface the bandsaw cut left behind, everything seems to be completely
welded.
The reverse tip needs to be forged back so that the cutting edge curves into the back
of the knife.
The pattern will follow the same curve.
At this point, weak welds have a tendency to open up.
Fortunately, everything seems to be solid and holding up here.
While the steel is now in the basic shape of a knife, the edge and back are of the same
thickness.
The jig on the power hammer helps to bevel the edge and also elongates the wolf's tooth
pattern.
Finish forging with a wet anvil helps with blowing of scale from the steel.
This sometimes makes impressive sounds but I did not capture that on the video.
To quickly reduce the thickness of the edge, I am using a push stick to get more aggressive
action from the belt sander.
This way I can make very quick progress.
Quenching the glowing blade into high-speed oil hardens the high-carbon steel of the knife's
edge.
A quick test wit a file confirms this and now it's back to the belt grinder.
I have already moved to a fine grit belt in preparation for etching the steel to bring
out the pattern.
For the final step in this procedure, I use scotch-brite belts which create a fine satin
finish on the steel.
There are many different ways to bring out the pattern in the steel and here I am showing
my standard routine.
I start with a ten minute soak in ferric chloride.
This coats the surface of the blade in black oxides but the nickel steel and the high phosphorous
wrought iron stand out clearly.
To remove the oxide layer, I do a quick polish on 600 grit wet sand paper.
This is followed by an application of metal polish which removed the remaining oxides.
The pattern is already quite pretty.
The final step in my regimen is a mixture of red iron oxide and oil applied with fine
steel wool.
And that is how a broken spear turned into a beautiful knife.
When looking at the teeth pay close attention how the grain of the wrought iron follows
the pattern - this is an indication that no stock removal took place.
That's it for now.
As always I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Please, subscribe to my channel and share my videos.
I am still working on the video in which I turn old wagon tires into a crucible steel
knife but that should be ready soon, too.
See you next time.