Forge a Knife!

Last week I spent 3 days at the North House Folk School taking a class with a very good friend of mine.  We forged a knife.  Yes, just like on the television series Gunsmoke, I forged a knife.  And it was bada$$.  Dangerous as heck.  Heat, sharp objects, power tools, all combined at once.  Nine students and nobody got hurt.  Nine interesting students from Minneapolis, the state of Washington, and Duluth.  Ages varied from 17 to older than me.  We all got along.  Coal?  Yes, real coal.  We burned coal in our forges and I had a black lining inside my nose. Not charcoal; this was some other kind of coal that came in 50 pound bags.  I used about $5 worth of coal on my knife.  If anyone wants to know how to start a coal fire, I am now an expert at that. Our bellows had a hand crank.  The story begins in the driftless area of Wisconsin.  A squirrel got into a Honda CRV.  The first day the squirrel destroys the foam padding and the upholstery.  The second and third day the squirrel eats the wiring and totals the car.  The owner gets more money from insurance than the car is worth.  He retains the springs from the car and from that comes at least 9 knives.  Our first job as a knife forger, and I was not expecting this, is to straighten the coil and cut a piece off for our knife.  We heat the coil in our forges.  I stick one end in the hole on our anvils (yes, we got to use actual anvils) and with a tongs try to pull the curve out of the coil.  But we did it and without burning ourselves.  I cut a four inch length of coil off the length by heating it past red, past orange to a yellow color over the coal forge and hammering it over a sharp point.  When I got it beat to 90% through I use two tongs and worked it back and forth until it broke off.  Whew!  Then I heated my coil section to yellow and banged the hell out of it until I had a flat rectangle. It was not easy.  My instructor, who has made several hundred knives, make the metal look as pliable as bread dough.  I do not have that strength or that talent.  Our instructor said to hammer each blow a half blow over from the last blow.  Yeah, right, a half blow over.  I'm lucky to hit the yellow glowing metal instead of the anvil.  My accuracy improves though with time.  After the first 8 hour day my shoulder, elbow and right hand ache terribly.  Plus my ankles and knees  and hips are screaming because I've been standing on cement all day. I'm so into it I forget to drink water.  I wash my hands and the soap lather is black; not gray.  I look in the mirror at the end of the day to brush my teeth and see that my nose if black with coal dust. My clothes are filthy. Oh, tis good to get dirty. The second day is more hammering. I choose a rat tail tang on the knife instead of a full tang. The tang is the part of the knife underneath the handle.  A full tang involves sandwiching the knife end between two blocks of wood and setting them with pins and epoxy.  A rat tail tang is smaller and fits into the handle with epoxy but does not go down the full length of the handle  Both options are equally strong.  My friend and I are a bit behind the rest of the group.  She gets anxious about it but I reassure her that our instructor will help us finish.  Turns out I am right.  After the second day we have our rat tail done but not our handle and not our guards.  But by the end of the third day we have a completed knife and it looks awesome.  We anneal (harden) the knife blade by heating it up and submerging it in vegetable oil - the sharpened end first and later the entire blade. The knife makes bubbles in the oil. Geez, that was a gleaming hot blade of metal.  Later we I could have sanded and filed all the hammer blows off my blade but I wanted mine to look like it was hand forged.  We temper the blade with a propane torch making sure we heat the tang first and let the heat rise up the blade as the color changes from straw to purple.We sand the purple color off and sharpen the blade. I think our instructor seems very laid back considering the danger involved and all of his students are now armed with sharp knives.

Here the hot knife blade is being annealed in cheap vegetable oil.  Does that not look dangerous to you?

  I chose a copper guard with a Peter Panesque shape and an antler handle.  "You want whimsical?" asks my instructor. "I do," I reply.   I thought about a black walnut handle but decided antler was better.  I considered a bone handle but got a little queasy handling the bone so went back to antler.  I love it.  I file the antler so the end isn't sharp.  The deer grew a natural depression that fits my pinky finger just right.  My friend also chooses a copper guard but her handle is from some black ash from her property on the Gunflint trail.  Both knives should be sharp and strong enough to cut roots and branches.  Now I need a sheath so I don't loose it.  This bada$$ knife is too sharp to put into any pocket.  I would slice my jeans and my leg.  For now I am storing it in the middle finger of my suede gardening glove.  By the end of the third day my elbow and shoulder feel better but what hurts is my core - my abdominal core must have been exercised without my knowing it.

The Honda CRV car spring.  My knife is on the right and hers is on the left.

The school is located in downtown Grand Marais right on the harbor.  We both wanted to take a class here and we wanted something out of our comfort zone.  We wanted a challenge. We chose well.