Coffin-Handled Bowie Knife: Hand-Forged Clip Point Blade and S-Guard (Complete Build)

[Music] hey guys phil balmhart here so for today's video i'll be working on a custom buoy knife this is going to be a coffin handle knife with a long uh sharpened false edge so uh we're looking for a 11 inch long blade and a 7 7 inch long handle so kind of interesting proportions there and uh since the last time i did a cough and handled buoy was uh this one this is technically the first buoy i've ever made uh i've definitely come a long way so i figured i'd get the camera out and take you along and uh we'll see if we can uh make something a little bit nicer so the uh steel i've been using lately is adcrv2 so this is a two inch wide by uh 3 16 inch thick piece of stock here so this is what i'll be using for the blade so we'll uh we'll get it hot and see what i can make all right so we're going to call that good on the preform we got a nice long uh clip point set up a little bit of a forward curve which is fine because um when we hammer out the edge bevels it'll sweep back upwards and give us the uh the shape we're looking for so kind of on that third heat there it got a little too hot i felt i wasn't getting it hot enough so i left it in the you know i'm using a charcoal forge so i can't really see it but i left it in there a little bit too long and we started uh started burning off the end so that's a loss of carbon which is not great so uh this very very fine tip there i purposely did that so that i can lose that without an issue and we don't have you know the the very tip of the blade is too weak so so you know originally i was cutting this kind of preform out with a saw or an angle grinder now i'm able to forge it out uh so i'm happy with my progress there still using all the same uh tools same hammer same anvil same forge uh but it's all technique so so happy with that so we'll get the edge bevels in and should be good to go hmm [Music] okay so i think we got definitely uh definitely enough curve there it looks like too much but i think once we lose that uh that very end there i think it'll uh kind of balance itself out so i think we're in good shape [Music] okay so for uh setting up the the tang it's important to always put the spine of the knife on the uh the anvil so when you do blow here you're gonna get a sharper angle transitioning from the blade to the uh the handle that's something i learned from trying to make historically accurate viking knives and i found with any sort of narrow tang or hidden tank knife that's still a helpful way to go huh so [Music] foreign uh hmm so so so okay so a couple points on uh burning through tangs one thing you definitely want to do is have a pilot hole uh the entire length of how how long you want the uh the tang and another point is to have a taper on your tank so i i kind of shape this to a point rather than having that kind of blunt end of the tang that goes a long way as far as getting able to burn it in because this is what's driving through the uh through your pilot hole so two reasons i see people failing at these things is either they their their tank is too big and they're trying to you know power it through or they don't have a pilot hole you saw that i drilled that hole out and then i opened it up with my uh saw my leatherman there's a tool called the brooch you can use for that as well but this does the same thing and that's that's kind of the third tip for a successful love burn through tank okay so we've got kind of a uh a rough coffin handle uh shape here so just try to on the grinder i'm gonna try to sand in some some gentle tapers here so [Music] okay so i just used that old 60 grit to kind of establish some bevels knock off the scale so uh i already had the edge fairly thin not not super thin or anything but i definitely don't uh these things are really tricky to get straight and heat treatment if you get them too thin so i'm going to switch on over to a 60 grit belt uh maybe a fresh one or one that i haven't used much at all and we'll kind of get in the rest of the bevels [Music] [Music] [Music] so okay so i've got the handle fit up to the to the blade here got some pins in there and uh despite my best efforts i got a little bit of wobble in the uh in the fit of the guard just you know so the handle is now fixed in place because of the pins uh so what i'm gonna do here is kind of make a brass uh shim basically a collar that's gonna go in between the um the guard and the blade and i will uh you know fit that down so that i get a nice snug fit here other than that i'm happy with the way this is shaping up it's actually kind of a challenge trying to drill these holes in this is the second uh knife to have an issue with uh drilling the holes it seems like this 80 cr v2 uh was uh a bit harder than it was supposed to be it was not in uh in an annealed condition so i don't know if that happened uh from the forging had that issue with uh some quarter inch stock and uh that was just a stock removal project so i don't quite know what's going on there but i did manage to get the holes in there so we'll go ahead and get this brass collar made [Music] [Music] i purposely made these holes smaller than uh the diameter of the uh of the steel so it is that i can file it to fit so i got a little square file i'm going to connect all of these circular holes okay so now i got through four of the holes there so i can take a flat or small file and open these up a bit all right there we go just need to expand that just a little bit more all righty so i finally got that uh got that brass fit up on there got some uh these are some old drill bits push through as uh as pins and yeah now everything now everything is nice and solid okay so i'm trying to uh normalize this blade didn't want it uh to get too hot we're just gonna let this slowly cool down and uh with this adcrv2 you're supposed to do this three times before uh quenching so that's what i've been trying to do with these big buoy knives a little bit of a cooler day today it's uh it's uh it's april 20th we're getting a little bit of a snowfall here so it's uh fairly cold out yeah we'll hang this up and let this uh let's cool the rest of the way so i got a few other knives that i'm uh quenching today but in between heats when the blade is cooling down i set my can of uh oil on the fire to heat it up because i got to heat that up to about 120 degrees hmm got a little bit of warping on that first section so recession so now for the second one i still let it cool down but i'm gonna clamp it up so that it's straight and so we can take a look right here looking pretty straight so i've just got this uh candy thermometer that i stick in the oil and use to uh check the temperature and i got a lot of oil in here so it does take a little bit to warm up still got a ways to go all right looks like a lot of the slack exploded off so that's good straightness looks good i usually throw it in the vise just to just to play it safe okay i think we're in good shape let that cool check the hardness let's see yeah yep that's good to go and just for uh just for a point of comparison here's the here's the tang whoops and the file is 100 bound up on that switch back to the blade no it doesn't doesn't catch at all and on the tang it it binds up because the tang is still is still soft so so good quench so we're gonna get this in the oven and uh temper it at 350 degrees for two hours and i'll do that twice okay so i left the knife sitting some vinegar here overnight so we'll take it over the wire wheel and see how it cleans up [Music] okay so i wiped it down with some acetone so here's where we're at so i'm gonna go ahead and uh spray this down with some cold blue just to see if we can uh darken it up i actually got my little spray bottle uh top on the blowing so we'll see how how well that works okay so we've let the blade sit for uh for a day usually gets a little bit more rusty than this so we'll see how well it took i had a little bit of issue with the spray bottle if you uh noticed so i've since thrown that out and gotten a new one but uh we'll just neutralize the cold blue with some windex and we'll spray it or scrub it down with some steel wool and see what we got as far as a blade finish and for obvious reasons i like to do this process before i sharpen it okay not uh not too shabby but there's a couple spots where it didn't take so i'll probably i'll probably want to do this again to be honest all right so now i've got the blade wrapped a wet towel got the guard fit up here and uh before i do the sharpening or the the handle install i'm going to just attempt to do a little bit of a silver solder on the on the guard just to try to kind of lock in the uh guard to the hilt i've got a real tight fit up on the handle and all that with brass but i'm just going to give this a shot see if i can improve the fit up of my guards here [Music] [Music] [Music] right so this is uh sufficiently cool now and the uh definitely a pretty bad solder job there i'll need a lot more practice on that but i mean the guards on there um i'm sure i'm sure i could bust this if i wanted to but uh this is just sort of an added bonus something i'm gonna try to improve on with these uh just these knives with the guards i think it'll be fine either way we've got a little bit of discoloration on the brass i'll have to try to clean that up obviously the heat discoloration on the guard itself too so uh we'll try cleaning that up and we'll get the the handle on there but overall i consider that a success good little experiment okay and i got a bit of acetone and a q-tip here and we'll clean up this stuff around the guard here all righty so we got the handle all uh glued up and it's dried so we'll just uh clean the glue off grind these pins down i'll sand it down throw a coat of stain on there and then we'll sharpen up the blade and we'll be ready for a sheath [Music] okay then i'm going to put some leather dye on there this is a dark brown but it's going to make this a kind of a deep red which is a pretty neat color and this alcohol-based dye really penetrates deep and kind of brings out a neat uh luster to it so i've kind of enjoyed using this on uh for the blade catcher buoys and and things like that so i think it'll fit in real nice with this was this one here wipe it all off the handle here we'll just let that uh soak in and dry fully and tomorrow i'll come back and uh kind of buff it back with some uh real fine steel wool okay so i've let the handle sit overnight so i got some quadruplot steel wool and we'll just polish this back see what we got so this particular wood seems to be taking on a little bit more of a brown color even sort of a orange which is interesting because on the on the oak that i've primarily been using it on it's definitely a deep red but doing this uh alcohol dye and then the steel wool really gives it a nice smooth uh nice smooth finish not bad so now we can go ahead and sharpen up the edge [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] do [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all righty well yeah uh this thing cut really well everything held up nicely you know nice sharp edge held that held the edge yeah everything just came together real nicely it's a it's a really fast uh nimble knife even for its size so that kind of 3 16 of an inch thick uh just sort of helps keep the weight down versus something that's a quarter inch the extra long handle was you know what the customer requested but that really does help kind of uh counterbalance the knife i don't i don't really get hung up on the uh on the balance point but you know it's got a quite a bit of steel for the guard so the uh it puts that balance point a little bit closer to the uh the guard than than normal but it just sort of helps balance it out um let's see here just get a good yeah so a little bit forward of the guard uh for this kind of large fire knife i like having that that kind of forward uh weight and you can really especially for like a false edge uh cut where you where you flip it around or you uh you can use it like a like a medieval messer and do a false edge cut uh like that um it really just gives you some momentum with that you know a quick forward uh strike so big fan of that the guard shape was the uh the customer's request so that was fun to uh do a bit of blacksmithing there and kind of practice my uh my scroll work the solder job on here first time doing that that worked out well i mean this is still you know rock solid and all that it wasn't an extreme test by any means but um you know sometimes even just cutting water bottles guard will you know just get a little bit of wiggle in there and i have to shim it so this held up perfectly fine you know simple very straightforward blade but uh nice knife i'm happy with the way it came out customer's happy with it i mean it's uh from the sounds of it it's what he was looking for so we're all good there customer also asked for the gunslinger type of sheath which is just what i call my kind of drop down leg style so i've got it kind of wrapped around the uh the belt loop there so it's actually nice and and very compact this is kind of my personal favorite sheath design of mine before i even got into knife making this kind of a big buoy knife type sheath just always i always just sort of like this look so there's a lot going on it looks cool you got the got the concho but it's all it's all pretty functional so there's a belt loop here so you could actually put this on your belt as is and just wear it like this no problem we've got a loop here with the pull dot snap so it'll only disattach in one direction that upward direction so it's the most secure snap style so you can wear it on your belt so this will only snap in the one direction it'll only open up in one direction so very secure system i like to carry it so that the snaps are inside and not hitting the uh the wood of the of the knife there so that can be worn on the belt like that and then the leg tied down with the drop down uh kind of leg feature with the with the snaps this can go around the leg right above the knee and it just sort of helps keep the knife from flapping around keeps it right up with your leg and so that can come all the way off and i've got this metal uh baler or a square ring and this i left enough of a gap that this can actually be uh removed from the sheath let's see if i can do this without too much trouble here yeah so that can be removed it's got some little uh you know little scrolls on the end just to just just for a you know decorative termination but also kind of helps keep this from coming off accidentally so now you have you know just the belt loop if you wanted to go uh that route but the kind of the the using this sort of ring suspension method actually really helps keep the knife to your leg as you move and walk around so i really like i really like the way that this this kind of works so so doing the uh the milk jug slice you know kind of getting uh three in a row just sort of helps check the uh edge alignment you know good straight clean cut means that you know i did a good job keeping that that edge uh nice and straight so happy about that from doing the the hanging milk jug test it kind of uh helps check with the uh the handling of the knife so again very quick and nimble in the hand the you know handle handle is nice and uh and rounded over so comfortable and with the uh taper going down to the guard here with this uh as it as it widens out here that really helps lock in your hand and keep your your hand from uh sliding off the knife kind of like a kind of kind of one of the first palm swell ideas if you will of the uh of the 1800s uh and of course it's long enough you can get a second hand on there if you really want to do some uh some serious chopping so all that worked out well and i'm happy with the way that the um fibulinx leather dye works on the wood so this thing got completely soaked when i did the hanging milk jug slices and this you know held up well they didn't take to die off or anything that that stuff really penetrates deeply and and lasts a long time so i'm going to coat this in some bree wax before i send it off to the customer and uh it should be good to go yeah overall really happy with the way this turned out so hopefully you guys enjoyed watching me uh build this knife you can follow my work on facebook and instagram if you want a custom knife check out my etsy web store i've got links in the description box as always i appreciate the support thank you so much for watching and until next time be more viking you

Channel: Phil Baumhardt

Views: 28,691

Keywords: Blackheart Forge, blacksmithing, bladesmithing, knifemaking, hunting, bushcraft, bowie knife, hand forged, S-guard, backyard bladesmithing, big knives, fighting knife, Jim Bowie, cowboy, s-guard, 80CRV2, custom knives, custom build, handmade, 3/16, scroll, gunslinger, sheath, concho, custom, texas, coffin-handled, bowie, coffin, Moore, Phil Baumhardt, cold blue, 1800's, mountain man, frontier, knife fighter, Brodbeck Grinder, 2x72, Red Label Abrasives, USA made, Michigan

Id: h2EUCZeTZk8

Length: 37min 18sec (2238 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021