Forging A Unique Feather Damascus Chef Knife

in this video I'm making my knife number 97 it's a feather Damascus kitchen knife so it's going to be a feather and I'm going to stack up my 15in 20 which has the end stance for nickel and that will be the contrast steel it will be bright and shiny and the 1084 is a similar carbon steel but it will etch dark in the end you'll see that I've got all of the pieces of Steel St act exactly where I want them now I'm going to encapsulate them make it so that there's no Oxygen that can get into the Billet oxygen can uh produce scale Mill scale and we're going to make an oxygen free environment inside of this Billet while we're Forge welding it together okay you've heard me say it 100 times but this is my favorite one of my favorite parts of welding billets together is watching that crazy time lapse on the Billet heating up as is that just mesmerizing I got to say another one of my favorite things uh there's a couple of them here when I'm doing a Billet is watching that Mill scale fall off in the Press on some of the first Heats on the sides it just smushes that scale that uh decarbonized steel just pushes it all around and crackles it it's just mesmerizing I got my Billet welded together really good now I'm going to resquare so I take these angle iron dyes and I make the corn Corners go to the center and the centers of the Billet become the corners it's called res squaring it does some pretty fun things inside the Billet it makes these beautiful patterns I've got the mill scale off where I want now I'm going to cut it off on the ends and get rid of any of the unwelded sections of the Billet cuz the very ends get distorted odd and they do not always weld up perfect all the way out out on the end so I'm just going to cut that off I'm going to clean that spot up that I just cut off and I'm going to check it for imperfections looking for cracks or even the mild weld from the Mig and it looks fantastic now I know that I've taken all the icky stuff out on each end of the Billet I'm going to stack this up looks like four pieces and multiply my layers exponentially up three pieces now we're cleaning them up just a little bit more taking out any little imperfections in the steel any slag or decarb oriz places put them back in the Vise I'm going to weld them up to make sure that we don't get any Oxygen inside those welds we want a perfect weld super clean I got my Billet super nice and hot around oh it's probably around 2250 bump 2300 definitely don't go under 2,000 when I initially do my Forge welds almost the Metal's almost decarbonizing out on the end just the surface of the metal is just almost starting to Sparkle if you get a sparkle you've gone too far so it's just almost right up against that spot got it drawn out what I'm doing here outside grinding with the big grinder is I am removing some of the mig weld on the side of the Billet so I don't accidentally press them into the Billet that mild steel will show up into my final knife pattern so I've taken it out outside and I'm grinding those uh Mig welds off clean clean clean is the trick here now that I've got this Billet forg well together I'm going to start pressing it the other direction that's why I took those welds off I didn't want to push them into the Billet Kyle and I built this press this uh hydraulic press I don't know 17 16 18 years ago I don't know what it was quite a while back Kyle bought the components about $800 worth of components this press moves about 1 in per second it's very fast it's almost like a hand hammer on this particular pattern that I'm building I'm doing two patterns within one pattern so I build one Billet with a particular pattern now I'm uh building another Billet that will layer with it so there' be actually two billets come together to make my finished pattern in the knife and we're going to encapsulate it so it doesn't get any Oxygen there as well a little drama with the forge it's fun to light them little whoosh little burnt hair on on the eyebrows maybe from time to time that's not a bad [Music] thing they got some cool stops in there uh we got them in some of them are 8 in intervals uh from 2 in down to 1 in we just made them out of mild steel but they work great just give you a reference point of what you just got something to shoot for instead of just guessing you get a really consistent press on your on your uh Billet too instead of getting crazy deformations from pressing too hard if you use stops and shims you can press evenly and keep your pattern very tight and clean I'm cutting on the icky ends of the build off again and we're going to check the pattern we're going to dip it in feric chloride and we reveal the pattern just takes a couple seconds there's my two patterns I'm going to put together just a straight layer and a w pattern layer we start folding them weld them together clean them up real good with the an grinder I'm getting ready to stack them for my probably has got to be my favorite process in making knives is doing a feather pattern it's it's crazy how bad the Billet looks when you've you'll see here in a little bit when I've pressed it and uh Forge welded it and drawn the two pieces in half it look the Billet looks terrible then somehow this beautiful amazing pattern comes out once you weld it back together together and etch it and take a look see what that pattern is going to look like when you're stacking like this you got to make sure your parts stay in the proper order cuz sometimes they're very similar on what they look like as far as the dimensions and you can get your your pieces twisted around sometimes patterns are going to look cool back into the Vie it won't fit in the Vise we got to use a pipe clamp we got the edges all cleaned up so we're going to we're going to weld these little buggers up and keep the oxygen out so we get a super clean weld again clean clean clean clean no shortcuts these feather bullets are sometimes a little tricky to slip into the forge there you go I cut down through there little bit at a time keep it hot this smears cutting down through the center smears the pattern and makes that beautiful feather [Music] effect wa that's so cool cut down all the way through that was a beautiful beautiful stack of Steel we had the patterns were were awesome good welds all the way through now look what we did to it it's just that Billet looks really sad like this we're going cut the handle off and put a handle on a little handle on each one of them and just we gently gently going to shape them we're going to flatten them so the two pieces weld together nice nice and flat I've got some welds on the outside some Mig welds sticking up and that's the direction I'm going to press on them so I want to make sure I take out the that mild steel off of that Billet on the outside so it doesn't push into the Billet and show up on my final knife see we're just barely kissing these we're just flattening them in the flattening d we're not we're not shaping anything we're just flattening them out got them cleaned up pretty good now we're going to marry him back together I left the welds on the other sides to help prevent tearing there's no need to grind those out we want to forge all these together before we grind those out she's nice and hot around 2200 de gentle gentle gentle presses I'll press maybe a 16th of an inch at a time it takes me several Heats but I want to make sure that core is heated up real good and I do just really mild Heats and presses I've got the Billet well together I've got got it drawn out as much as I'm going to draw it out I'm going to get ready to cut it slices off of it now on the band saw I did normalize this also in the heat treat oven I did that off camera I put it in the oven and heat it up to, 1600° and let it cool down the room temperature then I'll do 1500° room temperature then 1,400 and it relaxes the steel makes it a lot easier to cut on the band saw that's still hard to cut high carbon steel now each one of these slices I'm pulling off of here will make a knife so my billets big enough to get a couple knives out [Music] of [Music] [Music] I want to see the pattern in here that's why I clean it up so much so I'm going to stick it right back in the forger and start welding on it there's my pattern beautiful you can see the two different different billets when they are layered [Music] together well another handle on her and put her back in the Forge and we're going to start making a knife now finally after several days of [Music] forging I like to get the tip started with a hammer do it by hand first I I think it helps me lessen the chance of getting tears when I hand Forge that tip cuz if I do it in the Press sometimes I've notice that I can get tears a little easier and I got to go back and fix them or grind them out so if I hammer a little bit more in in the beginning it helps prevent the [Music] tears I can get tears when I'm working on this rasso area as well the chil area so I do a lot of hammering here shaping I found that if I press on it too much in the press that it can tear easily or it tends to want to tear it doesn't always but so I just do a little more hammering on that chil area back there at the heel of the blade as well the tip and the heel uh chil area get get more attention it's it's not a race it needs to be needs to be kind of right so I just take my time there the more knives I make the it seems like the more time I take in certain particular areas the faster I am in some and the more I slow down in others I want to maintain this pattern that's why I didn't forg the the bevel and the blade a lot I wanted this profile this uh pattern profile to have a particular look to it so I didn't Forge that that taper down the blade down a lot at the blade Edge [Music] [Music] o it's hot outside drinking coffee 100° outside it's a whole lot more in that inside forging full sun I did normalize off camera because I think I'm getting ready to heat treat now I put these scribe lines on here to show me where the blad Edge is going to be and I will I'm I'm probably about 50 60,000 thick right there and I grind it down grind up the blade the side to get rid of some of the mill scale and the grind why it's easy cu the high carbon steel after it's been heat treated is kind of it's really [Music] hard I just got done normalizing the life and you can see the beautiful pattern is showing up on it now it was at uh 1,600 1500 1400° and in a cycle and it cooled down in between each cycle and it relaxes the steel now we're getting ready to harden the steel so what we're going to do is we're going to turn this up to you can see the set point is it 1525 that's the temperature we're shooting for and then we're going to put it in the oil and cool it down in just a second or two down below critical temperature which is around [Music] 800° our temperature is up it's going to maintain we got our oil that's our quench oil it's Parks 50 it's specially made for quenching knives and this type of Steel and they're a [Music] tarden you still see the pattern in the mill scale I took it over the surface grinder and did hardness test on it with a file now I'm going to flatten it on the surface grinder flat and straight flat and straight I just gently dusted it on the surface grinder it's still really brittle so I'm going to bring it up to 390° to temper it the tempering uh relaxes the steel a little bit and makes it tough it doesn't uh it takes some of the brittleness out depends on how high you temper it just makes it like a leaf spring in your truck or your car nice and flexible but super tough and it'll go back to its original shape I'm going put some scribe lines on here these are my final permanent scri lines that's about maybe a 20,000 Gap there on the blade Edge and I'm going to rough grind down to those scribe lines then start working a little bit finer past that that's my rough starting spot and I run those scribe lines back on the back side of the spine also as a reference point to make sure that I'm tapering my Tang evenly this just a visual reference point I don't I don't uh grind to those lines by any means but I can look when I'm doing my distal taper on the blade if I'm uh if I'm starting to get off on one side of the other got a rough ground in I got a 120 Belt on there now instead of the 36 we'll take a quick look at the pattern we're not quite there yet we're getting really close to hand sanding we got to put an S grind in also this will just give us a good idea of about what we're going to be looking at I like the center of the patterns just gently above the center of the knife so I drew that bottom section out I did draw a little bit of a taper out on the knife at the blade Edge when I was forging it just a little bit we're going to do a little performance test on our knife so we're going to put our convex on the blade Edge now I'm probably around 17,000 thickness on the blade Edge so I'm going to convex it down to that and I'll run that convex up on the blade maybe 38 of an inch I'm on hand sand the spine of the knife just a little bit to soften it I've got chefs that like a very sharp edge on the back SP side of the knife on the spine uh but this is going to be for uh probably be for a a user in the kitchen and we're getting ready to put the es grind in here here so I'm going to do a layout and Mark this where this s grind goes I'm just not going to go over the grinder and start guessing we want to know exactly where it's going to start and finish we won't exactly hit it but we're going to come also very close to these lines I know they are marker lines but they will give me a a very clean reference point of where we want to start start and stop I'm using a 14in radius on this particular knife cuz it's got a nice thick spine so this is a weight reduction and grinding this grind in here will help with food release too it does more good on the weight reduction it makes the knife very fast forward than it does for food release assists with food release but it does not prevent it but it does make the knife very fast forward this is a 36 grit belt so it's it's grinding pretty good then I'll I'll bring it back to a a 120 and probably like a 320 grit when I'm all done I have several different s grinds s grind platins I use I made it a 48 I see a 36 I made a 36 I I use it like once and it was too too broad maybe I'll use it on a really tall knife someday maybe but I made a 24 and it worked really good for a long time I thought well i' I'd like to cut that in there a little bit little bit deeper so I made a 14 and you can't use that if your knife spine is around 150,000 it makes the center of the knife Way Too Thin on this this particular knife I'm already going to end up with maybe 30,000 to 40,000 uh on the on the S grind in the center so the blades only that thick right in the center which is just about as far as you want to go it's very comfortable but you wouldn't want to remove much more I've got the S grind where I want it I'm going to start working on the knife and different aspects of the knife now so if you go past 320 grit you're just going to scuff and scratch it up so I leave it at a a fair barly finished grit and start working other components like the like cing my name in right now with the with the IMG stencils and uh the chemical Electro etching and fitting the guard or bolster in the handle so the blades at 320 it won't get messed up too much at 320 I'm going to put a little Sharpie in here just so you can see how the name comes out it pops pretty good the Sharpie is just uh give you an idea of what it looks like this is one of my first JS knives too after I passed my dreamman Smith test so I just started using that stencil with the js on it I got some of my custom copper alloy that I'm going to put on here for a bolster so I take a one of my ingots start slicing up on the band saw then start Milling It Down Start fitting it on the handle it's uh 223 and 22 caliber range brass mixed with copper and it's about a 6 to1 heavy on the copper cuz I wanted that beautiful bronzy Golden Bronze Hue not aluminum bronze but silicon bronze it's just a little bit darker uh not so shiny not nearly it doesn't look nearly as brassy as uh aluminum bronze uh we like the darker look silicon bronze is our favorite uh but it's a little bit harder to come by so I thought it'd be fun to just to cast some so I cast it and I use it it we can make wire out of it we got a roller we can make a lot of different things uh from these ingots of custom copper alloy and it patina is really nice it distresses and it textures beautifully you see all the work I'm doing to the knife now all the different components and that knifes getting kind of beat up you know laying around on the workbench so that's why I took it to 320 I don't take it any further but it is at a shape we want it's a finished profile which is where you want to be so I'm getting ready to fit this beautiful piece of I believe it's African Blackwood handle on [Music] here [Music] [Music] that's a high RPM uh drill from Harbor Freight it's a 3600 RPM it's like a rotary tool at that RPM so you can stick a file on that a chainsaw file you can stick a drill bit in there and it just it helps to fine-tune to get that Tang fit just gently snug on the handle without being loose or too [Music] tight that's a good fit that blackwoods or uh yeah African blackwoods it's going to darken a little bit when I start working it more it's going to look really nice [Music] start profiling the handle layout lines are really important for me Kyle can go over and just start eyeballing it and make it come together but I'm I'm just I'm not there yet he does layout lines on some stuff for sure a lot but on something like this he'd just come over and start carving on it come out beautiful but I'm not quite there yet I'm working with working with lay out lines it's safe I do a lot less hand sanding and filing rasping like right here on the 2-in round wheel I'm getting really good at profiling rough profiling with the round wheel so it really helps uh keep your time down on on the builds I got radiuses marked on the back of the handle there I got radiuses on the front to go by these pencil lines just give you a reference point we got a great exhaust system in the shop a 5 horse a 2000 CFM 4 in it's got a 8 in intake but we got 4in lines going to all the [Music] equipment real quick I'm Josh son of the legendary dad and if you're into making knives this message is definitely for you mastering new skills can be a real challenge but with our online courses you'll learn from one of the world's top bladesmiths Kyle Royer our courses are designed to help you make awesome knives faster and with fewer failures saving you time and money so if you want to level up your knife making game check out the link in the description don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from one of the best ran into a a little bit of a a little hole little knot hole there in the candle on some my finished sanding so a little CA is going to just fill that just beautifully that wood is it's not a fancy piece of wood but it's just got this beautiful grain to it beautiful colors it really polishes up nice as well it's naturally stable I got a little bevel on the front like a museum fit for where the uh bolster is going to fit the handle it's just a couple thousands relief B nose looks really nice on there I've got the bolster fit to the handle now I'm going to grind a little bit more maybe 10,000 more all the way around around off of that bolster so I get a a museum [Music] fit I'm grinding in my bevels I like to put a little bevel on the front of the bolster it makes it a really nice place for it to pinch the handle and it's a great reference point also and it just adds a little more profile to the knife just a fun thing it's just a little more time a little more money but it's fun to do to give to the client I like it I suppose my clients probably do [Music] too okay this never gets old tempering back the tank I I to capture these I post some of these on Instagram too but it's fun to watch that especially on a time lapse if I get my lighting just right they bring that bluish purple color up into the Tang my Tang is still very hard to drill through with a plain carbon um steel High high-speed steel bit so I put a brass copper aluminum insert into my tang I've laid the the handle in there and drilled a hole through it where the hole in the wood handle goes into the Tang so then I drill a little bit larger hole into the tang and I'll put a brass or copper insert in there so when I go to drill my after I fit my handle and epoxy it on I do a final drill through the whole handle and it goes through that uh brass or copper aluminum insert and secures the the Tang to the handle I am doing finish sanding here I'm going to bring this up to uh 1500 grit and I'm going to put in the fic chloride and start etching this is the final etching I'll do this in the fic chloride several times same between itches the nice bold [Music] pattern I sand gently in between etching sessions to get rid of any unwanted scale that produc is produced from the feric chloride to keep the metal clean then when I get it where I want it I will prep my coffee my instant coffee in this big drywall pan stains still drywall pan heat coffee up to around 120 130° and that coffee will physically etch into the dark steel the 1084 that we talked about way in the beginning of the the vid it does not stick to the 15 and 20 and that's shiny so now you can see the contrast between the two Steels really really well I'm going to put a really nice thin coat of 100% car nuba wax on the blade it makes a very very durable finish and it just gives that knife a long long long time before it starts to to Patina I'm getting ready to bed the Tang into the handle with epoxy so I'm going to scuff this up really good with a Dremel tool make a bunch of little micro burs all over the Tang so that the epoxy has like a th000 10,000 100,000 places to grab mies my epoxy glex Mo system I take my time here to get 100% coverage coat the Tang really well the casso area coat the bolster recat the Tang fill the handle full of epoxy let it ooze out which it did off camera now I'm going to clean up the extra epoxy that oozes out and a pro tip here is the epoxy can ooze out for several hours and it's still pliable barely barely pliable after an hour or two now I remember earlier when I put that brass insert into the tang and I marked it uh with a hole that I already drilled all the way through the wood handle well now we're drilling a slightly larger hole our finished whole size all the way through the handle in through the tang with a brand new hole in that brass insert so everything is going to fit super gently snug it's going to be great real nice and gentle this knife is finished no need to get in a hurry here this needs to go just nice and smooth take if you took a half hour to drill this hole it wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things we got a beautiful Dome on there gently domed I wrap tape around it so I can buff that D pin it's real subtle you can see it but you can hardly feel it and it does make a very nice uh indexing spot spot so you know where your hands at all the time when you feel that Kyle got me on this using this clear magic tape to protect the Damascus from getting any stray scratches up on the blade the broadback sharpener works great for this but sometimes on those early grits 220 400 grit they can throw stray scratches up on your Damascus and you have to look really close to see them but they're there so we put this tape on there and you get no stray scratches at all and it looks great you can see the S grind in there you can see the convex you you can see the Apex that's sharpened that's beautiful you see my name in there a little bit it's hard to show up on the neascus I did a distressed patina on the bolster which looks incredible on my custom copper alloy it's African Blackwood polishes up just beautifully this pattern is a little bit different than what I've done before it's a little more bold we want something that was going to really show good in the kitchen a little bit more dramatic pattern here and I love it or for you guys out there that have not done a feather yet it's a little scary but once you do it you're going to have a failure you can fix it but just go do it uh the feather is going to take your knife into another level it's just going to bring an aspect of your knife making together try something different on maybe not a high-end knife but maybe uh maybe a practice knife I'll see you guys in the next video May the forge be with you bye-bye

Channel: Kyle Royer

Views: 63,287

Keywords: knife making, how to make a knife, how to heat treat a knife, how to make a bowie knife, how to make a bowie, knives, kyle royer, kyle royer knives, making a knife, sharp, how to make knives, bladesmith, master smith, blades, damascus, knifemaker, diy knife, anvil, forging, custom, knife, great content, steel, bowie build, bowie knife, 10 inche bowie knife, blade, knifemaking, knife maker

Id: zCsC5GFflAw

Length: 33min 29sec (2009 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2024