Handle on #1 in Progress

The wood is glued on and drying, will be shaped next.

Heat treating the #1 Camp Knife

Progress on Camp Knife #1

Been Working on #1 (for lack of a better name)

Filing in some grooves for better grip.

I believe this is called "jimping"

The new Grinding jig worked out very well.

Im at a bit of a stand still right now because I chucked my drill bit set out the door.
VERY poor quality, I broke all the smaller ones then the larger ones started snapping even under very light pressure.

It could be my drill press, the chuck has a nasty wobble.

Finished the Sheath

The finished sheath.

Its my first one and I made a lot of mistakes,  the next will be much better.

My friend took it home yesterday ...I miss it already.

Grinding Jig

A jig I made for grinding better bevels

The two bolts on the bottom go through the angle iron and tilt the jig to whatever angle I need to grind a bevel. 

I haven't tried it yet cause I need to increase the table length on my belt sander to 20 inches. I have a 20 x 5 x 3/8 plate I will use. Its on the thick side so its very heavy.

This will allow me to drag the jig along the plate.

 

Here is an example of how it will work

The only downside of my jig is that its so big it forces me to use a big table. But it will be a lot more stable then a smaller one like in this picture  ....I hope

Oh Look! A Finished Knife!

Me and a friend finished this yesterday for him to keep. It still needs sharpened and a sheath.

Metal is 1084

Blade length is 4 1/2

Width is 1 1/2

Thickness is 3/16

Total length is is about 9 inches 

This was stock removed not forged, I like the knife so much though I might try to forge one.

A video of us quenching it 

I have the blade rough ground out! So far I really like it. I don't know to much about balance and all that yet bet it sets in my hand real good.

As you can see the handle is straight out instead of curved downward a little like in the sketch.

This I will do with the forge. I'm not sure if I want to forge the bevels yet, if I do it will increase the width of the blade and that would be nice cause I had to shrink the sketch to fit it on the steel bar. 

I will say, this was way to easy! I knocked it out in around 15 minutes with an angle grinder.

Takes hours to forge a blade from scratch!

I do prefer to forge from scratch though, I feel right about it. Anyone can cut a shape out of a bar of metal  It takes skill, time and determination to forge a blade from scratch.

Not saying I have the skill though, last 3 blades I tried to forge failed pretty bad.

But that's part of the experience! Each one gets a little better and iv'e always learned best the hard way.