To Make a Knife

As I noted in an earlier post, I have been getting into blacksmithing as a hobby. It is nice to work with my hands, since my day job is entirely behind a desk. A couple months back I attended a class at Tillers International, a local organization in the Kalamazoo area. The class was on making a knife. I had taken a basic blacksmithing class last year, so I had some idea of how to manage the coal fire forges, what tools to use to shape the blade, but the creation of a knife from start to finish was a new challenge.

Steel is a fascinating thing. The carbon/iron alloy that our world is built on. It is capable of holding up sky scrapers, but it can also can be made so brittle that you can snap it with your bare hands. The process of making the knife was to create something hard enough to hold an edge, and resilient enough not to shatter. 

The picture shows our stock, a straightened piece of salvaged spring steel, my thumb, and the coal fired forge. I shared the forge with a fellow attorney (apparently I am not the only wants to hit things). 

Almost all the iron in the universe is from the hearts of long dead stars. The carbon too. The coal used to fire the forge was a long dead plant entombed for millions of years in the earth. I am literally hammering the heart of a dead star with the life fire of the ancient dead!

After shaping and polishing I ended up with this. Looks pretty. This piece of steel is right now extremely flexible, so much so that it would lose its edge quickly if used. It cooled slowly in the air. If I had plunged it into water, it would hold an edge, but would break easily. You have to find a middle ground for a good knife. 

After getting up the the critical temperature, we quenched the blade in oil. It was thick and quenched slower then water. 

And then tempering, which is almost magic if not for the science underlying it. You heat the blade until the colors appear. You heat until the color is right. We used a blowtorch. 

The straw color is what we were looking for. Telling us that it was ready to clean and sharpen. 

The handle took almost as long to put on and shape as the forging of the blade. 

Patience is something that I struggle with. My ADHD makes it hard to wait for anything. I always want to get to the next exciting part... to the detriment of what I am working on. But making a knife, it is deliberate steps. Waiting for it to cool so you can do the next. You can't take shortcuts or the knife will not hold up. 

Fire and heat to shape and temper. But also hard work, sandpaper and grinders. Then polish and handles to make it look right. It is hard to think that a two day class will change how you work, but I feel like it did. I feel like it changed how I approach my writing and how I accept myself. Take a moment to cool, then we can apply the polish. You can always relight the forge and start again unless you burned the stock up or ground it to slivers. 

And that is how I forged a knife. And that is how I have almost completed a novel. 47000 words as of last night.