Bladesmith Newbie

"Hira Zukri" Tanto

2010-09-14T16:19:00.001-04:00

To continue my practice with knife-making I decided to make a Japanese Tanto. It is a dagger or a miniature katana. The style tanto I decided to make is a call "Hira Zukuri". It is a common tanto design used by Samurai in feudal Japan. The reason I chose to do a tanto is because, Japanese style blades are what influenced me to become a bladesmith.

The first thing I did, was draw up a design. Second you make a preform otherwise known as a "sunobe". A "sunboe" is the initial shape of the tanto, I started with a steel billet 1"x 1/4"x 12". All a steel billet is, is a rectangle bar of steel. You heat the steel to temperature, then start hammering the steel to shape, making sure you hammer blows are consistent and in the right spots. When forming the "sunobe" you want to make sure, you forge your "distal taper". "Distal taper" is when the tip of the blade tapers to the "machi" (machi is where the middle of the blade starts its shoulders that separate the blade and the tang.) and from the "machi" to the tang. That is the basic explanation of the a how to forge a "sunobe" on a Japanese blade. There is actually a lot more to it, but this is not a tutorial.

Anyway, here are some pictures of my "sunobe" coming to shape.

That was the first session, here are the pictures from the second session.

That is where I am at so far, I still have to straighten the spine and fix up a few kinks here and there. Then I move on to forging the bevels. Stay tuned!
Thanks!

"Tactical Chopper" Pictorial

2010-09-11T12:53:00.000-04:00

Here is the "Tactical Chopper", this is my first completed knife. I will show what it look like along the way.

1. This was a piece of mild steel I found in my garage. I did not take a picture of the blank billet, I have a picture of what it looked like after hammering out the initial shape:

After forging out the initial shape and doing a little bit of filing I then traced the outline of the blade onto a piece of paper to get a actual size drawing of the blade. The reason for doing so, is so that I can draw out what I want the finished product to look like. The sketch above the actual piece is what I am trying to get the actual blade to look like.

After that, is the fun part. Filing and sanding! Draw filing for hours, till I get the bevels prominent. After that is sanding, start at a 120 grit working my way to 800. I did not want a mirror finish on the product, plus the piece of steel I started with was thin. So I didnt want to take much more steel off of the surface.

Here is the finished knife, I wrapped the tang in digi camo paracord. I am pretty impressed with the outcome, this being my very first completed knife.

First knife completed! "Tactical Chopper"

2010-09-11T12:09:00.000-04:00

Ok, so after a long time I finally completed my first knife, and I named it "Tactical Chopper". I know I havent been posting for a while. And it is because I was really busy, along with completing the "Tactical Chopper", I also received my good steel yesterday. It is 1084 high carbon steel, 1"x1/4"x4' sections. And I got two sections, so that is 8'. I have been working on another project as well, I started it after completing the "Tactical Chopper". It was a file, I bought a bunch of them from the pawn shop.In the next few post I will be doing a pictorial progression of each blade. The first one I will be doing is the completed "Tactical Chopper". Enjoy!

Ryan

First Knife

2010-08-30T19:11:00.000-04:00

Ok so here is my first knife, I spent like 5 hours on it today. And I am pretty satisfied with it too.

Here it is when I started this morning.

And here it is after about 3 hours later. No file work or sanding, all hammer.

Obviously I am not finished, tomorrow I will narrow the width of the blade to about 3/4" and then work on the bevels. I will post when I complete those task. Thanks.

First Heat!

2010-08-29T14:42:00.001-04:00

So my fourth layer of "satanite" is on and I am about to go to Harbor Freight Tool store. I am trying to find something that will hold the torch in place while heating the forge. I plan on taking pictures and keep you updated on how it is going. Later.

My first forge!

2010-08-29T00:10:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody, so I started to build my paint can forge. It is just a paint can with some ceramic insulation wool coating the inside of the can. I coated the wool with a refractory paste called "satanite". It is almost like clay. Here are pictures of the forge so far.

Ok, so this is the paint can coated with the insulation I used called "Insowool". I used about 2 ft of it.

This is the forge with the second coat of "satanite". All I used for the the applicator was a small toothbrush.

Right now I have applied my third coat of "satanite" and it is in front of my fan drying. Tomorrow I plan on doing my "first heat" and that is a pretty self explanatory phrase. We will see how that goes, oh and tomorrow I plan on doing an overview of all the tools I have so far. And also an overview on the tools I need. Well thanks everyone for reading this post. Until next time!

My first blog!

2010-08-28T23:49:00.000-04:00

Ok, this is my first blog. Forgive my if I seem dull and boring to begin with. This is the first time I have ever "blogged" before. So anyway I as I said in my info about myself. This blog is going to be about me and my journey to become a bladesmith. So here we go!