Survival Knife Forged from a Lawn-Mower Blade; Backyard Blacksmithing, DIY Knifemaking

the guys for bottom heart here so for today's video I've got a lawnmower blade I want to see if I can make a knife out of it so it's got these holes in the center here so my plan here is to basically chisel that off and they'll kind of make a preform for like a bowie knife and then this here that's got that's kind of curved over so I'll flatten that out and this in here will be the Tang and the rest will be the blade so should be kind of a short stubby little GUI we'll see we'll see what I can get out of it so I'll get this in the Forge then we'll just let down not ideal try it again with this piece here okay so you can see that that's the this is going to be the spine of the knife and so the handle needs to butt up to about there so right about here is where the handle will end so I'm kind of trying to hammer in a little bit of a divot a bit of a ricasso there while still making sure I have enough of the tang but it's not gonna be a full tank but the Tang is going to be sufficient enough to back up the size of weight of the knife once I finish up the tang now I'll do the ham around here and give it that kind of quick point I know that's probably about with shapes and it look like it's kind of a weird bowie cleaver apocalypse is the Worf knife I don't hate it the thing out there another heat or so just to make sure everything's all straight and then I'll anneal it okay so the knife looks like after it's been annealed and I cleaned it up a little bit with the the wire wheel I kind of defined this forecastle area with my half round file so there's the spy of the knife so that the handle will go right about here so you'll have a nice big finger choil area and then this divot or dent from the lawnmower blade this is existing form in the lawnmower blade that actually kind of gives you a nice place to put your hand for choking up on the blade a little bit of a sweep from the from the hammering the edge not as big of a Bowie pattern as I was originally thinking but it's kind of a nice cleaver kind of size and the the whole their behalf of the whole remaining from cutting the the blade down I imagine that as like a camp for bushcraft night you could use that for picking a hot pot handle off of the fire or something like that kind of a hook there so I still might put a little bit of a back cut on this area but this would be a good kind of camp kitchen knife or you know probably a wood processing knife as well because the the weight you could do some chopping and all this so I think it'll be a decent kind of camp bushcraft knife something a little bit different than what I usually do which is you know kind of historic based knives this was gonna be a little bit more of just sort of a original design you know maybe something that you come up with if can hit the zombie apocalypse kicks off or something like that this is so kind of a zombie survival knife maybe but let's start grinding it and see what we get [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] okay so I'll check the straightness and do a file test okay so it's a little warped it kind of bends this way doesn't matter if you can see it only knows that I can see so I want to get this hot straightener back out again and we got a got a quench it again all right so basically I've got the pins hitting right now so now I can work the handle evenly and how it'll be fit onto the blade so I'll be able to keep everything neat and even and kind of just keep it true as I go [Music] guys here's the handle after the glue is dry so you can see it's a pretty messy and I got the the handle pins are sticking up because I cut them deliberately long so we're just giving a nice sand over clean up all the glue and then the the pins will be nice and flush what's the rush to the handle after that put a coat of stain on there and once that's dry I'll shower it up and that'll be about it for this knife [Music] okay so the handles all dry I put a coat of linseed oil on there and let that dry so now we're just gonna put the final edge on there and since I got a you know variable control on the the work sharp grinder here I like to use this for putting the final edge on my knives the big Kalamazoo grinder is great but I can't control the speed so it'll just eat up something like this trying to put an edge on there I just make sure I got a burr going and then I can switch the next belt okay here's what the finished knife looks like kind of a fun build so a lot more blade it's obviously not something that you're gonna want to set out and make a knife out of just because it makes a good knife but it was a fun product to do and I like the way this knife turned out kind of interesting proportions interesting design it was fun to do something that I wasn't trying to base off of a historical references it was nice just to be able to kind of be creative and do what I wanted to do so a neat little recurve at the base of the blade there so that I'll be good for doing fine whittling carving tasks I sharpened up this kind of false edge here on both of them just making a big chisel point so you can kind of use that for like some scraping kind of thing got some file work on the spine there to be like jimping so and that little groove in there smooth so you can you can really choke up like that handle isn't too big but what's that shape is kind of like a machete or a bolo knife so it's really got a good chopping feel because it's got a lot of weight at the end of the knife but it's not overly heavy because as you can see it's fairly thin so it still got it's very handy like it you can manipulate it in your hand really well so just kind of a fun concept of you know if it's the apocalypse and you want to make a knife you know what kind of steel are gonna have laying around might have a one more blade so this is your lawnmower blade survival in life so I'm sure you could find a spot on here somewhere to strike sparks off of a Ferro rod your fire starting capability right there it's big enough to putana with it's got enough heft today to chop with and because of the nimbleness and the slashing power I'm sure you could use this to kill a few zombies okay they'll do a quick little paper test after chopping up that birch birch logs aren't you know the toughest wood but it wasn't rotten by any means or anything like that so here's that same Midway USA catalog so not as sharp as it was but the interesting just crumble all right so not the worst steel certainly not the best but you know what do you expect from a lawn mower blade but hope you guys enjoyed the video thanks for watching and until next time be more Viking you

Channel: Phil Baumhardt

Views: 14,248

Rating: 4.8052435 out of 5

Keywords: cleaver, survival knife, bushcraft, blacksmithing, primitive, forge, Blackheart Forge, Be More Viking, $50 Knife Shop, scavenged steel, fimbulwinter, Viking, hand made, DIY, lawn mower blade, repurpose, Kalamazoo Industries, WorkSharp, grinder, grinding

Id: 3Pgk4KRMxww

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019