Tanged Trade Knife

[Elnathan]

I finally managed to actually finish a knife! Well, kind of - it needs sharpening and a sheath yet...

Here is the blade:



And here is the completed knife:




The blade is about 6 3/16" long, 7/8" wide,just a hair over 1/10" thick at the spine nearest the handle, and is finished with 220 grit sandpaper with the scratches running short-ways to mimic the grinding pattern from an 18th century industrial wheel. The steel was a piece of O-1 drill rod and the handle is made from cherry held on with 18th century-style cutler's epoxy made with pine pitch and beeswax. The whole thing weighs about 2 1/2 ounces.

This one is based on a knife owned by Nathan Kobuck and illustrated on his blog several years ago: http://buffalotrace1765.blogspot.com/2010/08/so-today-i-got-some-kewl-stuff-in-mail.html
Apparently there have been a number of them found at Fort Stanwix as well. I  have been working off the assumption that this patternwas a trade knife of some kind, manufactured in England and shipped here. The result is pretty close to Kobuck's example, I think, but has a bit more of a belly due to a grinding error.

The handle requires a bit of explanation.
There have been no original handles found, so apart from knowing that they didn't have ferrules no one knows what they looked like, though a turned handle seems quite likely to me. I don't have a lathe, though, and I didn't want to use an (expensive) piece of European or tropical wood on a guess. I ended up making a "user-made replacement" handle out of domestic hardwood - the idea is that the original handle wasn't dried completely and split when introduced to a new climate or was otherwise destroyed, and the owner, rather than discard a perfectly good knife, quickly made a new one out of some wood he had readily available. The wood is scraped and I didn't bother trying to make the handle perfectly symmetrical, though it is close enough not to be immediately noticeable. As a matter of fact, I cut into a charred spot from burning the hole for the tang, but since the actual hole isn't near there and it seems structurally sound, I went ahead and used it anyway on the logic that my fictional woodsman wouldn't have worried about it.

It isn't all that pretty, I admit, but I think it will be a good user and is closer to what was actually carried out in the woods than some of the fine art knives I have seen here and elsewhere. It is certainly an improvement on my first forged knife, which is picturesque but weighs three times as much and has too much metal behind the edge for easy sharpening.

Praise and flattery Critiques welcome.

[LRB]

  Looks great to me, especially considering what it is supposed to represent. There's really little or nothing to critique. It fits your theme of what it you went after very well. My only suggestion would be the choice of steel if you must forge. 1080/84 would forge easier, and the heat treat is easier and less critical when trying to get the best out of the steel. However, the 01 even with a simple HT will usually produce a decent enough blade. Good Job !!!

[Elnathan]

Thanks Wick! I am going to try to get some 1080 next time.

[Artificer]

Looks fine to me as a representative of an 18th century English trade knife with a replaced handle.  I don't think I would worry about a "grinding error" as there were bound to be variations in hand forged and hand ground blades.  "Perfection" or even "Sterile Uniformity" wasn't something they worried about then for these moderately priced knives, though if enough originals were ever found, it MIGHT be possible to identify the work of some shops or even some original individual Blade Grinders.  I doubt that many blades will be found in the Archeological Record, though. 

Was the shape of the grip something you have found you personally preferred?

Gus

[Elnathan]

"Was the shape of the grip something you have found you personally preferred?"

I liked the look of it, but hadn't had the opportunity to try it before now. I suspect that in practice the only real advantage over a straight handle is that it will be a little easier to get out of a sheath that covers a lot of the handle - the crown on the end of the antler-handled knife I mentioned earlier has that effect. Mostly I thought it looked good.

[Artificer]

I was wondering because I've never tried that handle shape and wonder how it might do.

Good point on getting it out of a sheath that covers most of the handle.  Hadn't thought about that and I've made scabbards like that as well. 

Gus. 

[FDR]

Admiral Steel has 1080 and just about anything else you might want.

http://www.admiralsteel.com/products/blades.html

Fred

[David R. Pennington]

 Nice looking knife. Can you give us some detail on your heat treating method, and have you tried it out yet?
I forge mostly with junk. What kind of steel are files typically?

[LRB]

  Hi David. Most files are basically 1095 and W-1. I say basically because some producers apparently use special runs of these steels with a shot of extra carbon that slightly exceeds 1%. Either of these two types can be well heat treated by treating them as typical 1095. 1095 requires a very fast cooling quench, such as brine or a commercial oil designed for fast cooling. Parks #50, or an equivalent. Canola oil will give a decent HT, but not quite the best hardness. Only brine will max out the 1095, but there is a risk of cracking, so with thin blades, oil is safer, though you sacrifice a little hardness. To get the max hardness, 1095 must cool from around 1470°/ 1475° to under 1,000° in .6 to .8 of one second, or you will miss the maximum hardness level. If any where close, you still get a decent blade, just not quite as good as it could be.
     01 is quite different, needing only a medium fast  quench oil.  The problem with it is that you pretty much need a HT oven to do it right, and get the benefits of it's alloys. 01 needs a temp controlled soak at around 1475° for 15 to 20 minutes before quenching, in order for the alloys to go into a homogenous solution and give an even carbide distribution.  You can get a usable blade from 01 with a simple HT, but you won't get it's intended potential. If forging 01, you need a higher forge heat than with the 10XX type steels or you risk micro cracking. The 10XX steels, other than 1095, respond very well to simple HT methods and quench oils, although even these prefer a fast quench to be at their best.

[Elnathan]

Nice looking knife. Can you give us some detail on your heat treating method, and have you tried it out yet?
I forge mostly with junk. What kind of steel are files typically?

I use a small, charcoal forge and heat it up to about an orange heat. I do my best to let it soak as long as I can, but the fire is small enough that just getting a six" blade heated up evenly is rather tricky and takes some time. I tempered it by putting it (and another knife and a pair of plane blades) in the kitchen oven for around two hours at 450 degrees - O-1 needs the same temperature as corn bread, as it so happens, so I just left the oven on and did my tempering during dinner....saves a bit of electricity. I did a test run with a pair of thermometers inside to make sure that the temperature was accurate.

1080 and 1084 need to be tempered at around 350 for knives, I think, and that is a really common heat for cooking, so it should be easier to heat treat via the kitchen stove than 1080.

[Elnathan]

1080 and 1084 need to be tempered at around 350 for knives, I think, and that is a really common heat for cooking, so it should be easier to heat treat via the kitchen stove than 1080.

A correction for the record: 1080 and 1084 should be tempered at 400, not 350, to get rockwell 60-61, as per http://www.cashenblades.com/steel/1080.html

Not sure why I thought it was cooler. 

[David R. Pennington]

Last two knives I made were forged from files. I heated them with the spine down in the forge (coal forge) bringing the heat up slowly and let them soak a while till non magnetic and quenched edge only. I polished them and used torch ran along spine to draw temper and quench again. I honed them till they would shave hair and tested edge on a 20 penny nail. Put pressure on edge drawing it across nail like you are trying to shave slivers off the nail. Watch the edge. if it deflects slightly and returns it's good. If it stays bent it is too soft. If it chips it is too hard. I have used both extensively and they are some of the best knives I've owned. Dressed several deer with them.

[LRB]

  David, non-magnetic is really too low of temp for your quench. Non-magnetic is 1414°, which is the second heat range/phase change of the hardening process. Your final  target temp should be another 50° to 60°, pretty close to the next shade of red above what you see at non-magnetic. You will have a stronger blade if you full quench, then draw the spine through the colors to neutral, but edge quenching works if strength is not an issue.

[josephprivott]

Nice work OP!

Something to consider about the handle: I recently came across this dug original from Ohio, and was reminded of the blade in Nathan's collection.

"...excavated from a large refuse pit on an upper Sandusky River site in 2011. The reason these rat-tailed knives were discarded is due to their bone handles splitting out. ... [from] the Half-King's New Town site - Wyandot Co, Ohio"

[Elnathan]

Bone! That was one thing I had not considered....

Very nice find.

[Bible Totin Gun Slinger]

Elnathan, you did good, I'm real partial to a rivet or two.