Knife with no power tools challenge! Forging a knife with zero power tools!

everybody John Harold hickory forwards welcome back to the workshop oh you all know recently I did that six our knife challenge thing which is really fun a bunch of other YouTube Smith's got together and all did it and that paired with recently I got a comment I forget which video it was on but they said nice job with what looks like a pretty minimal setup honestly my setup is anything but minimal I am a hobbyist I'm not a professional but I also have several thousand dollars worth of equipment you know I got a big three burner forward to big anvil two by 72 metal chop saw band saw cutting torch all that mess so I got to thinking the that comment paired with having recently done that challenge got me thinking let's do another challenge let's do a knife start to finish with no power tools just to show how minimally it really can be done if your other youtube smith and you won't get on you know just comment on the video let me know you're doing it so I can watch the video the rules are gonna be the same as the ppalli one challenge knife blade is six to nine inches you can use whatever material you want so on so forth forges are excluded from the no power tools thing so if you've got a full coal Forge with an electric blower or a gas Forge with an electric blower like a forced air Forge those are those are allowed the forge is excluded but everything else has to be done with hand tools also no squirrel tail tags I know the second law you heard no power tools you're thinking squirrel tail Tang if you don't know what a squirrel tilting is that's what this is you can see it's all metal no handle work has to be done the knife has to be either hidden or full-tang so some manner of wood working or working with other synthetic material has to take place just to make it a little more interesting so material I'm gonna be using just a bar some 3/16 by inch and a half 1095 high carbon steel and uh let's take a look at some of the tools were going to need so here's what we got we got assorted rasps and files you know single cut file double cut file half round file round file for drilling the hole I'm actually probably gonna use my post drill over there if you don't have one of those these are gonna brace and bit but uh that's what we got so first thing to do is trim this thing down to the size I want using my cutoff party and I'm going to cut it off at about a 45 degree angle so to make drawing the point out easier to draw at the point that's nowhere near the angle I wanted but it'll do all right now it's time to forward to the point I'm just gonna start the tap corner back in on itself [Music] it's taking a few heats because the angle I started with wasn't really acute enough but we're starting to look like something going for a movie style blue so basically I want an even taper that's gonna go all the way from about back here down in a nice straight line so there's a good bit of work to do [Music] so we're getting there I'm just trying to refine it at this point all right now it's time to get the hang of this thing for Jatin so I'm just gonna prop it up the edge the end right about there should do it I just do a set down or do another set down [Music] and that's the material will Forge out to make our tank moving along force mistake like I said the further you get the easier against the mortar once and actually move rather than depend over on you so I've got the tank pretty much where I want it now I'm just trying to dress it up taking my time you wanted to be both the thickest and the widest up here at the transition otherwise the court papers on both sides now it's time to build this thing I'm gonna start right about here be careful not to touch this area back here because to fit a guard you do too you could define ricasso so there's these pebbles down a purchase of course the nice one is gonna curve as you go so you gotta kind of straighten it out that's okay cuz it'll kind of give you a chance to dress up and straighten this edge as well I'm trying to forge this thing at least 90% of the way to finish those very little fly or I'll have to do I just continue to work on this bevel I want it down to about half the thickness of where our normal be taken just the same time so I've got the blade forward just about where I want it now it's time to start establishing the shoulders where the cards here rest I'm gonna use a handle hot cut chisel for this and then I'll hot rasp it to its final shape just to save time you could do this with a handheld chisel as well I just prefer this once your most on the way through with a chisel you should be able to just grab that little piece you're cutting off with a pair of pliers or tongs and to share it off of there just like that there you go tank shoulders now it's time to do some hot grasping to clean up the tang of shoulders as well as the tank itself so I've got the Tang just about where I want it I can fix the rest of it cold later Collins do now is get this ricasso defined a little better I've actually switched to a less aggressive file because that last one just kind of wanted to grab them and push the metal rather than move it you kind of see what I'm trying to do there so Picasso where I want it now it's time to smooth out that cutting edge make sure it's nice and straight miss hot filing removes material surprisingly fast now I just need to take a good sharp half round file and dress up this clip-point real good so don't know how well this is gonna work but we're gonna give hot rasping this bevel ago like surfer in the void you'll undoubtedly have to work in sections but this is definitely faster than ooh Nicole so I found that as you get further down the blade then I really wants to bend more than files so it's better to clamp it this way then just by the tang makes it a little tougher to see what you're doing but it definitely saves you time straighten this way up so this here might be my million dollar idea what I've got is a piece of angle iron clamp of my voice a pair of vise grips and I can clamp this plate down and now I can draw file this bevel which is gonna keep the blade straight and give me a much more cleaning it's just a pebble I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner so if you're watching this and you're gonna tip this challenge give this a go so all I've done now is just take a few heats to normalize it and straighten everything up but this blade is 80% of the way done there's very very little work I have to do cold I'm still gonna go over it with a single cut file just to make sure everything's getting flat and get all the gouges from the double cut file out but as you can see the edge is already all the way almost down to preheat treat thickness which is pretty great I didn't think I was gonna be able to accomplish this much just with the hot rasping but all there did I was heat this thing up to critical and let it cool in the Forge nice and slow to soften it and then I'll throw it on top of vinegar overnight to get all the scale off to make filing a little easier on me but uh there you go so I've only actually left this thing in the vinegar for about four hours I was gonna leave it overnight but I ran out of stuff to do and got bored so now I'm down here in the workshop getting started on the draw filing it's all I'm gonna do just got a good sharp single cut file here just gonna drag it across the whole length of the bevel this is gonna make sure I've got a nice flat consistent bevel as well as get all the marks from the double cut file out it's a smart idea to keep a wire brush handy to keep your file clean because it will load up as well as some wd-40 so it's slow going but there's really not that much work to do because I got so much done with the hot grasping keeping at it this is removing material surprisingly fast actually I've only been at this for about ten minutes and I've already got a nice smooth clean bevel going so I'm just working on this tang there's a little bit of a bulge right here I need to get out so I'm just going out so here we are asked to draw filing and filing the Tang to true it's nice preheat treat thickness well actually it's thinner than I would normally go before a heat treat this is ready to pretty much be sharpened after it's hardened and tempered and everything so once the steel is hard there's a lot less work I have to do also squirt up the shoulders of the tang real good hopefully to get the guard to fit up real nice and there you go surprising how fast you can actually remove material with a sharp file that was maybe 30 minutes total of filing but anyway next thing we gotta do is get the guard for this thing made so I don't know if this is a good idea or not regarding structural integrity going into the heat treat but I'm gonna go ahead and cut in the secondary bevel it's going to become the cutting edge so hopefully after once this knife is hard the less I have to do the better so hopefully my reasoning behind this is once it's hard all I need to do is run it over the course and then the fine side of my sharpening stone will have a good edge so just got a clamp over my piece of wood here and I'm just gonna file and was gonna become that cutting head so you can see I've got my secondary bevel cut in I'll also draw filed it to get out all the vertical marks because those connect to stress risers during the quench my theory behind this is that once it's hard and all I'll need to do is run it over a sharpening stone to get a good edge you know it could be horribly wrong and this could cause it to crack during the quench I guess we're just gonna have to see now it's time to start on the card I'm using a piece of wrought iron for this softer than mild steel it's all there do is do a set down with the toe of my hammer on the edge of the anvil to isolate the material how many uses [Music] put a tape around here I'm good roughly the thickness of shay-bo on it and going ahead and cut it off with a pair 4 with a chisel so now I'm just gonna dress up that cut into little bit make it nice and even so now it's time to drill some holes to make a slot for the guard to be fitted a tank so I got this the guard chucked up in my post drill with a good sharp 8 inch bit harder do kind of close up to kind of show you I don't know if you can see or not but you can drill the hole surprisingly quick with this thing so drilling holes close together on a post drills a nightmare if you didn't know actually broke one of my bits off in there and then they just kept wanting to slide into the other hole so what I'm gonna do I got the tang of the file sucked up in the vise and I'm gonna use a pipe nipple I kind of just beat it down on there to open up the hole I started drifting out to be a to be put onto the tang of the night so next step we got a nice slot in our guard nice and centered we got a hand file it to uh to fit the tank perfectly as you can see we're about right there so we got a good ways to go and while I'm here I'm just gonna go ahead and clean up the edges from the chisel cuts and make it look nice and bring the guardian's wanna shape yeah it's just file in czech violin check so here's what we got after burning the Tang in we got the guard fitted up on the knife as you can see these two aren't flush so we gotta take our trusty file and remove some material from here until you get a good fit so like so many things with this project is just file and check vial and check file and check we're getting there but there's still a little bit of a gap all right that took quite a while but as you can see everything's flush guard fits nice and snug now that's quench this thing all right here we go for the clinch being careful not to harden the Tanger ricasso areas please God don't break out all this work so quince went really well she didn't crack didn't warp he's glass hard it's now it's time to temper this thing so just gonna clamp the edge up in my voice as always White's voice will act as a heat sink to keep the heat from traveling into the edge and I'm gonna heat the spy in ricasso and tang all the blue and then I'll temper the edge to a light straw there you go you got blue on the spine actually heated the tang all the way up to black to make sure it's good and soft cuz I still have to drill through it but uh you see we got that nice brown or straw on the edge so the edge is still good in hard but the backs good and springy so that's how I do pretty much all of my tempering so before the glue up I'm just doing a little bit of sanding on the bevels just to make them look a little bit nicer if the steps completely optional but I'm gonna do it so all you do I got some hundred twenty grit and I'm just polishing up the areas I want to shine I'm gonna leave kind of the roughness up here on the spine of the knife I'll probably take this up to 220 grit by hand you could polish it all the way up to a thousand and get a mirror finish if you wanted to but this whole projects mostly a proof of concept so I'm not doing that [Music] so here we offere the glue up all I basically did was a fill the hole I burned into the walnut with epoxy and then I put the whole thing in a bar clamp so it's all fitted up real nice I'm gonna let that set up and then we'll get the work shape in the handle so the epoxy on the handle set now it's time to start shaping out the handle for the bulk of the work I'm just gonna use my blacksmith's knife here you know just gonna shape it down a little bit at a time until I get roughly to where I want it and then I'll true it up with a wood rasp and then sand it [Music] so now it's time to sharpen this thing so I've got a coarse two-sided sharpening stone shucks to fit my voice it's got a coarse side in the medium side and I got a fine stone right here so just follow your existing edge angle apply nice even pressure I like to switch sides every ten strokes or so so there you go knife with no power tools challenge I like that the whole reason I wanted to do this was just to show that you can get by with very very minimal tools all you need is a heat source a hammer some files and a way to drill a hole but uh if you're another YouTube Smith and you want to get in on the challenge just comment on the video let me know you're gonna do it just so I can check it out honestly I don't think any less of you if you don't do it because this was a pretty huge mountain to climb I like that haven't sharpen a knife on a stone since I was about 15 so glad to see I still got it but uh as always thanks for watching please like share subscribe all that jazz and there's always gonna be more cool stuff coming so stick around

Channel: Old Hickory Forge

Views: 97,909

Rating: 4.9513679 out of 5

Keywords: Blacksmithing, Knifemaking, Bladesmithing

Id: k8tNdwvQ1Eo

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 09 2018