Spent the weekend doing some forge work with my old man

[Spots]

Me and my dad spent all day yesterday working in the forge, after setting up the rendezvous camp site. We made two horseshoe knives, one for a customer here, the other for a family friend. We also made me a large camp bowie. The bowie is 15" overall. 5" handle, 10" inch blade. Seasoned oak handle with a through tang. Hand guard and butt plate are made from horseshoes, knife itself started as a large chunk of 5160 leaf spring steel off a truck. Harden and then tempered in hydraulic oil. I'll be making more horseshoe knives to sell and trade. They are sharp, but not very good steel for knifemaking. They can be pretty and neat for wall hangers or good gifts for farriers and can be razor sharp, but they aren't high enough carbon to harden to good edge holding ability. Without further ado, the pictures.....

 

[Spots]

Btw I did use two power tools to make this. The coal fired forge uses a shop vac for an air soirce. A chainsaw was used to cut the 4x4 into a chunk. All the metal was moved and cut using hammers, chisels, files, hardies, anvil etc. I actually set out to see if we could build a knife like that without using any grinders, sanders, etc to do cleanup work. So I'm haply with the results, especially for a two day knife. Anyone have suggestions on what to rub into the handle to give it a dark oily color and look? Or should I leave it burned as it is?

 

[omarick1948]

WOW! ____ Please post when it's finished!

BTW...Power tools are our friends! :wink:

 

[Spots]

Normally we would use power tools like a grinder, wire wheelz, etc. This time we wanted to do it all by hand to get an idea of ehats possible using just what would have been available 100 yrs ago or more. And thats for the kudos. Ill post when its done, I still need to figure out if the handle stays the same or gets oiled, and do some stone work on that edge. Also making a sheath for it tommorow.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Virtually any oil will work.
Mineral, lard, bear, tung, anything.
It shore looks like a serious camp knife.