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J R R Tolkien

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30 December 2010

The finished viking knife

I finally managed to get a fresh bottle of gas for my forge and got around to finishing the viking style knife. It's turned out quite well. I used some piece of re-bar I found and considering it's an unknown bit of steel, and despite having developed some long cracks in the blade and tang, I am very pleased with it.

It's not going to see much service, except in the kitchen, chopping onions and such. The joint betwen the blade and the tang has a crack and it probably would not take much effort to brake the blade off. So it's going to have an easy life.

The blade is about 4 3/4" (120mm) long, overall 9 1/2" long. The only grinding I have done is give a nice curve to the cutting edge and sharpened it, and about 3/4" on the top of the blade at the tip to give it a point. The rest is as forged.

I have learned a lot from making this knife and will apply that new found knowledge to the next ones!

4 comments:

  1. Looks good.
    http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/

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  2. will it work as a fire steel?

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  3. Thanks Le Loup.

    To be honest, Grimbo, I don't know yet! I have to harden it and see. It might or it might not, it depends what the re-bar is made of. I gather re-bar can be anything, apparently even whole ball bearings have been found in the steel! I only used it because it was free and therefore useful for practice. I'll try it when its hardened.

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  4. Great design! I have also encountered those problems when forging the tang out as thin. It works better with a known steel as file or spring steel. I especially like the spring steel, because it can take quite a beating when forged out as thin as with a viking style. Try a medium carbon steel with little other contents. File works fine, too, but you have to watch the temperature a bit carefully.Nice job for a first try, though!;-)

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