- Joined
- Jan 27, 2000
- Messages
- 615
My wife Patricia, was watching me forge out a blade today and said that she'd like to try it. We discussed what she wanted to make and she decided to do a small one with a slight upswept tip. I was very proud of how her first forged blade turned out and decided to share it with everyone.
In this shot Patricia has forged in the tip and is starting to forge in the distal taper. She was very careful to keep everything straight. While she doesn't have a lot of power, she exhibited a surprising amount of control for someone on their first blade -- enough that I let her use my new $100 Tom Clark custom hammer.
Once the blade was to her satisfaction we cut off the blade and used the guillotine fuller to mark the back of the ricasso and start the tang. In this shot Patricia is drawing out the tang.
Here she is with the forging all done. Not a bad job at all in my opinion. She seemed to really enjoy it and said that she understands now why we (bladesmiths) like forging blades.
Here's the blade cleaned up a bit with a 60 grit belt. I helped just a little bit with this part and Patricia was none too happy about me touching her blade. She wants to do every bit of it herself. I explained that all I was doing was knocking the bark off and she will be making the whole knife herself. I won't be touching this one any more. Patricia will be doing all the heat treating, grinding, and finishing. I'll just be watching and giving advice.
She has not decided what handle material she will be using, but there's plenty of time for that. Since she's a teacher she will only be able to work on her knife on the weekends.
In this shot Patricia has forged in the tip and is starting to forge in the distal taper. She was very careful to keep everything straight. While she doesn't have a lot of power, she exhibited a surprising amount of control for someone on their first blade -- enough that I let her use my new $100 Tom Clark custom hammer.
Once the blade was to her satisfaction we cut off the blade and used the guillotine fuller to mark the back of the ricasso and start the tang. In this shot Patricia is drawing out the tang.
Here she is with the forging all done. Not a bad job at all in my opinion. She seemed to really enjoy it and said that she understands now why we (bladesmiths) like forging blades.
Here's the blade cleaned up a bit with a 60 grit belt. I helped just a little bit with this part and Patricia was none too happy about me touching her blade.
She wants to do every bit of it herself. I explained that all I was doing was knocking the bark off and she will be making the whole knife herself. I won't be touching this one any more. Patricia will be doing all the heat treating, grinding, and finishing. I'll just be watching and giving advice.She has not decided what handle material she will be using, but there's plenty of time for that. Since she's a teacher she will only be able to work on her knife on the weekends.
