Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => At the Forge => Topic started by: Sidmand on July 08, 2019, 11:51:35 am
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Been working on a new knife for myself - 9 inch blade, about 14 inches overall. 5160 steel at a hair under 1/4 inch thick. Katalox (Mexican Royal Ebony) handles with brass bolsters and hand made/machined loveless style bolts (they are about 1/2 inch, the rod is a 1/4 rod I had to cut threads in with a 1/4x28 die). The sheath is 6 to 8 ounce leather with artificial sinew and carpet tacks drove into 1/16 inch rivet for the backing. I will put a drop of superglue in each base later when I can get some more superglue ;).
This will be my everything knife for a while - I still have some of the 5016 bar stock left and will make a smaller skinner with it at some point. This is the 2nd knife I have made - I didn't forge in the bevels or shape but I did use my forge to heat treat it. It is hard and VERY sharp, but still needs final honing and stropping.
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Points not skinny enough to pick my teeth or clean my fingernails but other than that I love everything about it :D :D
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YEA BUDDY!
love it.
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Nice! I like it!
Hawkdancer
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That's a beast of a knife. Very cool!
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Thanks all! I am considering putting a false edge on the tip to make it a little less forward heavy, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea yet. Maybe I will just use it for a while and then adjust accordingly after I get a feel for it. I wanted it to at least look historically accurate and the originals didn't have a false edge that I could tell. I tried to use walnut for the handle scales, but I screwed it up twice and ran out of walnut. I found a local specialty lumber store that sold that Katalox and it looked nice, so I bought a 10 dollar board of it. I briefly wondered if I could make a bow out of it, but I don't think it is flexible enough. I know it is crazy hard though, harder than Ipe!
Those bolts were a giant pain - I started out just trying to use 1/4-20 brass bolts and hex nuts, but the nuts were to thin and the thread to coarse so when I went to grind it flat it ate through the nut and it popped off the screw shaft. My Dad worked in the mines and give me a big piece of "brass" that they used as shims for continuous miners. I say "brass" cause I figured out pretty quick it was an alloy with some kind of ferrous metal in it - brass isn't supposed to be magnetic or that dadgum hard! But, the sheet was 7/8 inch thick, so I cut squares out of it and then tapped the squares with a 1/4 X 28 die, then rounded them off to 1/2 inch diameter on the grinder and with a file. took a bit and there was some cursing and rework, but it came out looking pretty cool to me.
I was surprised at the shine I could get on 5160, I didn't expect it to shine up that well at all.
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Real nice! I really like the Hudson Bay knife
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That is a gorgeous blade! The handle looks a bit small for me, but I've got pretty big mitts. How does it feel in the hand?