blacksmithing

eightstring

eightstring

New member
ive been talking to some friends who make thier own knives, and looking up what information is available online. when i get a space and the tool to do it i would like to build a forge and start turning railspikes and old car leaf springs into blades of various designs. some throwing hatchets would be really nifty too. i was just wondering if anyone on here has done anything like this before? and if this be the case, if theres any particular things i should be keeping in mind? i look forward to hearing ideas! cheers.
 
Making a forge is easy, the hard part is the anvil and having neighbors not care that you are making a lot of noise. If you can get a cutoff piece of railroad about a foot long, that would work pretty well. There isn't too much more I can say than what's available online for you to look up. For rail spikes, look for the HC on the head. Know your metal. Just remember to strike while the steel is hot and to remember that certain mistakes are harder to undo than other.
 
I took a class a couple years ago in small knife making. The guy had the most simple forge design I've ever seen and it worked really well. We used old files as our metal stock and a chunk of railroad tie as an anvil. Slow cooled the knives in vermiculite (the light stuff you put on gardens) and tempered in old motor oil (which was exciting because after the 3 or 4th knife it would catch on fire! Our signal that we had to wait a while and let it cool back down.)

The forge, though, was a fire brick. You know, the softer than usual brick that you line fireplaces with. Down the long direction on the brick we drilled out a couple inch hole all the way through the brick with a long masonry bit. Then on the wide horizontal face drilled a hole until it meets the long hole. You heat the forge by taking a propane torch, just the usual hand held cheapo torch, and leaning it in the hole on the wide face. The flame spins through the long hole making a forge hot enough to work small knives.

BTW, apparently the guy teaching the class played with oxyacetelene and MAP gas torches and found that they were too hot for this kind of setup, and the ordinary propane was actually better.

I got a kick out of our handles as well. If you soak deer antler in water for a few weeks all the interior gets kind of soft and spongy. After making the knife out of a file blade the end is still small and pointy because we didn't work it at all. We took a spongy, handle sized piece of deer antler and just pushed the file end in. In one motion, not wiggling it around. As the antler sits there and dries out for a day or so it hardens back up and compresses around the file holding it onto the handle! Mine lasted about a year and then started to loosen up a bit so I cheated and poured some epoxy down there to stiffen it back up.

(oh, I just looked at the forge design above. The instructor brought one of those to demonstrate with as well. That precise design, in fact. It worked really well and of course allowed for larger knives than the little single brick forge.)
 
derekja said:
...and tempered in old motor oil (which was exciting because after the 3 or 4th knife it would catch on fire! Our signal that we had to wait a while and let it cool back down.)
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Having the quenching oil catch fire is definitely a party foul- it means that the quenching temperature is not set. Typically you'd want a thermometer to have the quenching oil or water set to the correct temperature for the type of steel you're using.

You can easily regulate the temperature of the oil in that case by suspending the can of oil in a larger can of water (set at the temperature you want).
 
I made an adze last year out of a favourably bent piece of leaf spring. Ground it down, put a nice workable bevel and sharpened it up but I tossed it because I didn't have a forge to temper it. That firebrick and torch jobbie sounds like just the thing for the amateur blacksmith.

What kind of steel is a railroad spike, anyway? Can that stuff hold an edge?
 
I've read a bit about this and from what I've read, using rails as an anvil doesn't really work because it has too much spring to it. I don't know, though. Just what I've read.

Spikes marked with a "C" on the head are high carbon.
 
Technically, you don't need a forge to temper something. I know professionals who use a torch for tempering, since it's much more precise than a forge. Most spikes are mild steel which will not make good blade edges, on the head should be an HC or HCS, which stands for high carbon steel and has twice the amount of carbon as mild steel- but it's still a lower grade than 1060 steel (which is typically the lowest grade for knives) from my experience. Those spikes are used in high stress areas, curves, switches, that sort of thing. It can hold an edge, but you have to adjust the bevel to the hardness of the steel. The harder the steel, the sharper the bevel angle can be (it really depends what your knife will be used for).

Rails still connected to the railroad don't make good anvils because of the spring, but it's better than nothing. Just make sure you have a lookout if you do that, you might not hear a train coming with all that hammering. A foot long piece anchored into a tree stump won't have that spring, since the wood will absorb the shock. You can find rail pieces where they cut a new rail to fit one that has worn out/been damaged. They can only be used for small works though.
 
i got picked up hitching by someone who used a cast iron engine belt casing for a forge, always wanted to do it but never have the appropriate space. i've heard that if you use a gas forge you can't over work it or it'll take the carbon out of the steel. i met someone who makes demascus steel knives and swords in a homemade propane forge that are really fuckin sharp and strong
 
If you're thinking of using rail spikes as a primary source for your steel, that's gonna be a lot of trips, or some wheelbarrows-full, right? Don't get caught "steeling" from the RRs!

With the right tools you could make firearms parts. To be legal, I believe you need to be licensed for this, in most any state. But with the means to do it, what a great knowledge and ability to have...
 
blacksmithing in the go can be useful to do pans from metal cans and other things, but for useful good knives, i doubt it
 
wartomods said:
blacksmithing in the go can be useful to do pans from metal cans and other things, but for useful good knives, i doubt it
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You're talking about working tin with metal cans, not blacksmithing. Those are two very different kinds of metal working. Stick a metal can in a forge and you're not going to get anything too useful out of it, unless you're using it for case hardening by packing in a knife with bonemeal and charcoal.

Since you doubt blacksmithing makes useful good knives, I suspect you have no clue what you are talking about.
 
veggieguy12 said:
If you're thinking of using rail spikes as a primary source for your steel, that's gonna be a lot of trips, or some wheelbarrows-full, right? Don't get caught "steeling" from the RRs!

With the right tools you could make firearms parts. To be legal, I believe you need to be licensed for this, in most any state. But with the means to do it, what a great knowledge and ability to have...
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Assuming you're less interested in the DIY coolness aspect and more interested in the getting cheap guns secretly aspect, wouldn't you be better off just soldering? It actually shouldn't be that difficult if you are just wanting a simple gun.
 
LovelyAcorns said:
Assuming you're less interested in the DIY coolness aspect and more interested in the getting cheap guns secretly aspect, wouldn't you be better off just soldering? It actually shouldn't be that difficult if you are just wanting a simple gun.
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Well actually, soldering is good for two things: electronics and copper pipe fittings. Fine for a potato gun, but not really anything else. Gunsmithing is mostly machining and heat treatment, maybe some welding and brazing, but definitely not soldering.
 
finn said:
Well actually, soldering is good for two things: electronics and copper pipe fittings. Fine for a potato gun, but not really anything else. Gunsmithing is mostly machining and heat treatment, maybe some welding and brazing, but definitely not soldering.
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Sorry, I always refer to welding/brazing/etc as soldering. I know its not accurate, but oh well.

But looking into this more... damn it looks easy. And apparently, according to federal law, you only need special licensing if you are planning on selling the guns, though a few states have their own laws.
 
if youre actually interested in making firearms that are somewhat safe and relatively accurate, a machine shop and machining skills are the tool-set youre after. Welding will help, but the important thing is to be able to make parts to very tight tolerances... As for the comment on soldering only being good for pipe sweating and and electronics, youve obviously never heard of silver soldering, which is a very strong, very durable bond used by jewelers and metalsmiths. It can be done to most non-ferrous metals and is a much different beast than typical lead/resin core soldering.
 
blacklines said:
if youre actually interested in making firearms that are somewhat safe and relatively accurate, a machine shop and machining skills are the tool-set youre after. Welding will help, but the important thing is to be able to make parts to very tight tolerances... As for the comment on soldering only being good for pipe sweating and and electronics, youve obviously never heard of silver soldering, which is a very strong, very durable bond used by jewelers and metalsmiths. It can be done to most non-ferrous metals and is a much different beast than typical lead/resin core soldering.
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I've heard of silver "soldering", but the term is correctly referred to as silver brazing, doesn't really matter though, i suppose it's a matter of opinion.
 
silver soldering is a colloquial term for silver brazing--its commonly used in metal smithing/silver smithing circles, also sometimes called "hard soldering", sorry for the confusion. Also in the case of "silver soldering", usually this refers to a smaller scale where the filler isnt in rod form. but is laid out with liquid or paste flux in advance and then heated with a torch, often acetylene and ambient air.
 
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