STWM, Should have took some of the excess curve out by hammering the spine before you ground. There's now a good chance of rolling the edge, but knowledge comes from experience and nothing teaches any more completely than the School of Hard Knocks! I'll see if I have a short piece of Danish sword stock laying around here. Might even have a length of broken sword blade blank that's been worked down already. It'll need to be worked above red color otherwise it'll crack on you.
How to avoid cold shuts sometimes (good explanation from Dave Lester on another forum):
As you are drawing a piece out, watch out forming "gutters", as when you draw out a narrow tang. Don't let this get too pronounced or the edges will fold over when you go to forge them flat. Another place that this is prone to happen is when you try to forge a point on the blade. The corners of the bar have a tendency to fold over. There are a few things to do to prevent this. One is to preform the point by cutting it. Another is to just simply round off the corners of the bar before forging. Just turn the bar point down on the anvil while the steel shows color and drive them back into the bar. Again, you can't wait until the ears at the end of the bar are pronounced or they will fold over and form a cold shut. Again, if you see one forming you will have to do something about it before you fold the steel tight or the only thing that you may be able to do is cut or grind the steel away. The other place that this can occur is when forge welding. Forge scale can block the weld or insufficient flux can allow oxidation and block bonds forming between the two pieces. Not getting the steel hot enough is another cause of of cold shuts while forging. One of my little knives below. Blade is 5 inches.
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I liked the excessive curve! Well, I did before it started looking stupid (during grinding?)... It's sort of persian. Not sure when it go so out of hand. I did pre-form the tip and also pre-bend the blade down before I started 'forging in the bevel' (like I even do that).. I'll put more of a wicked curve into it next time. It's hard with my "anvil" - I have to put together even a decent post. This is like 1x1 and dead soft. Danish sword stock sounds very cool. Hot cutting was very fun! I was super lucky to have a friend here to hold the hatchet for me when I was doing that.
Cold shuts are bad, i've been avoiding them by not ever fully closing anything. The "gutters" are my worst enemy..drawing out the narrow tang, yeah it's true. I've realized that you have to spin the thing and not try to take such big cuts out of it. My dear wife told me "hey, it's like play dough" when I was complaining that I couldn't figure out how to make it move like I wanted. I had no reference point in newtonian physics for this conflabbed activity. Now that I've spent some time vizualising play dough I think my next forging session will go a lot better.
I am looking forward to my next session! I look forward to forge welding (sometime). It'll happen! everybody wants that beautiful pattern weld, right? I don't have any damascus anything, someday my prince will come. Again, thanks a lot. I'm going to read and re-read.
Found some wagon wheel I don't know what to do with yet. Also some Wrought Iron (??maybe) rail that was the sliding track of the barn door. and some old forged hinges.
I'm going to pound on some rebar pretty soon I think, do some non-blade-smithing as much as it pains me. I need more practice with the basic forging operations. Also, tongs.
edit: in good news the blade edge is still super thick so maybe I can try and straighten it out when I try to take the twist/bends out of it before heat treat.
The thing that kills me is the little peck/inflection out of the spine where my grind was non-smooth. I had to use the corner of the wheel cause of the tool rest.. live and learn.
The cool thing I'm realizing about knifemaking is a lot of it is jewelering so at least I'll have some clue as to what I'm doing when I finally get there, maybe! Looking forward to casting a guard or hard-soldering something.
Knife is coming along nicely!!
