Cut Yourself - Project 3 - Forge a Blade

Project 3 - Forge a Blade

As the title suggest, in this post you will be learning how to make a blade of some sort and size to use to your advantage for hunting food or protecting yourself from the enemy (zombies).  I recently was sitting at home on a Saturday watching TV when I thought to myself, "I wonder how difficult it really is to make a knife, machete or sword from steel??" So, I decided to find out. Googling the topic did not help so much, I won't lie to you, I did find a few articles recommending the type of metal to use, and one really good write up on fashioning a Machete from an old Leaf Spring off a truck similar to what Rambo did in Rambo IV. Being a man of many hobbies and many skills, I knew I had some steel around the house. As a matter of fact I had a scrap piece of steel that was 24" long, 1" wide and 1/8" thick. This piece of steel was no high carbon tool steel, neither was it a light Stainless Steel, it was a very low carbon piece of steel forged from a hunk of iron and sold at your local hardware store for repairs or construction, but it would do for a first knife!

Gather your tools and supplies. To complete the project you will need the following, some of these can be substituted for other items but this is what I used and it still took almost 3 hours to finish!

Supplies and Tools

• Steel Flat Bar Stock (01 High Carbon Tool Steel makes the best blade, however just about any type of steel hard or soft will work for this project). Steel can be purchased at your local Hardware store, or for a wider selection you can check here OnlineMetals.com. I suggest finding a local Metals supplier with a storefront locally that can provide a vast selection cut to size. We have several in the Houston area that I will be visiting this week, I will post more once I have done my research.
• Parachute cord (this is used for the grip/handle of the knife and can be substituted for G10, wood, leather, micarta, or whatever else you decide)
• Permanent marker
• Metal Files (at least two are neccessary, a rough file and a softer file for smoothing)
• Bench or Pedestal grinder (absolutely neccessary this tool is a must unless you plan on filing the entire thing which could take weeks)
• Dremel Tool with Grinding & Cutting Wheels, and Polishing Compound and Wheels
• Jig-saw or Reciprocating Saw with Metal Blade (a hacksaw will work as well)
• Gloves (Metal gets hot when its being worked with)
• Eye Protection (Clear glasses to protect your eyes when grinding the steel)
• Assorted Whetstones or other shapening stone
• Drill and  3/16" to 1/4" Metal Drill bit
• Vise for holding the knife

Now that you have gathered your tools and supplies it's time to decide on a design. For my first knife I decided to copy a Gerber Tanto Blade that I have since the steel I would be using was exactly the same thickness and width of the Gerber Blade. I decided to make my knife much longer than the Gerber though. I drew my design on the steel with Permanent marker. This picture below is not the Gerber blade that I am speaking of, it is however a Tanto blade style knife that I drew out on the steel before cutting it out. Remember to click on any image to get a full resolution view!

Right: Cold Steel's GI Tanto.   Center: 1/4" Hot Rolled Steel with a modified and somewhat larger version of the GI Tanto drawn onto it    Left: My hand to show the size and scale of these knives

Ready Your Engines!!

Now it's time to get down to business. Using a jig-saw I cut the angle of the blade out of the steel and the curve of the handle at the bottom, basically what you will be left with is a very rough outline of the knife, with no edge of course. Now it's time to start putting an edge on this thing. Studying my Gerber blade and a few kitchen knives I noticed that the angle for the edge starts anywhere from .4" to .6" from the edge of the blade, dependent on the size of the knife. For this knife I am making it is exactly 0.5" from the edge.  I would start by grinding a 40 degree angle toward the edge using the bench grinder. 

Top: The knife that we are making, notice it is very rough looking at this stage, it is exactly 1" across the blade so you can see that the angle of the blades edge starts at 0.5" across.   Bottom:  The other piece of metal that was left from the original bar stock after I cut the knife shape on top out. Notice I started tracing another Tanto Blade design on it. It will make another good knife in time.

You should be pulling the knife through the bench grinder from left to right and back from right to left adjusting between a 30 and 40 degree angle each time. Doing so you will notice that it puts a nice angled edge on the steel. If you just keep one angle it will only take a small amount off from the edge instead of the full 0.5" that needs to be trimmed.  Make sure to flip the knife from one side to the other after so many passes on the grinder so that you are taking off the same amount on each side. The blade must be as symmetrical as possible! Here are some pictures of me grinding an edge onto the modified GI Tanto that was pictured first in this write up. Notice the angle of the blade on the first three pics and how I smooth the angle of the grinding out in the fourth last picture.

The grinding process is the most lengthy of them all. Once you notice the blades edge is sharp like a knife and the edge is no longer flat (it comes to a point) you are done!!! Now I used a dremel tool to smooth the angle of the edge on the blade and to remove any burrs of metal on the handle left behind by the jig-saw.

The Blade's edge has come to a point, it is time to smooth the blade out with files and the dremel tool

A tanto blade has two edges that are kept razor sharp , the angled edge and the flat edge that runs the length of the blade.  The angled edge on top is used for skinning and jabbing. A quality tanto blade has the tops angled edge shaped to perform these tasks.

More on shaping the top angled edge - remember how we started at 0.5" from the edge of the blade and started grinding the angle out? Well, the top angled edge must be ground at an angle out as well without taking off too much metal and losing the hardness and holding strength of the blades point and edge

Now you can drill a hole in the bottom of the handle or as I did, drill several up the handle to help reduce weight and allow places to feed parachute cord through, realistically four to five is plenty for parachute cord. With my knife's handle area in the vise, blade sticking out, I could see it was time to file.  Here comes the real fun part (being scarcastic here)! This can be a workout and make your arms sore, make sure your gloves are still on. Taking the roughest file you have a work it up the blade to smooth out anything the dremel and grinder left behind. Do both sides until you have an even angle starting at half the blade and going to the edge. This rough file should leave some scratch marks, so use the smooth file to help remove the scratches and put a finer edge on the knife.  Once you are satisfied with the condition of your blade it is time to put your handle on so you will have something to hold onto while sharpening. I wrapped parachute cord up the handle then back down, so as to give my knife a double wrapping of cord.

Sharp as a Razor!!

Once the handle is on it's time to pull out your whetstones or whatever type of sharpening stone you will be using for this step of the project.  I use 4 whetstones to achieve a surgical edge and mirror finish on all of my knives. The first stone to be used is a 1000 grit which will help to define the edge and remove any microscopic imperfections by shaping the edge of the blade. Once a pronounced cutting edge has been formed it is time to move up. This is where my 4000 grit whetstone does most of the work. Using this grit for some length of time should have the knife cutting paper, paracord and other objects that are easy to sever.  Next I use a 6000 grit stone to start polishing the edge of the blade and allowing it to make a finer cut. I don't spend much time on this stone as the final whetstone will do the knife justice. My final stone is 8000 grit and it makes the cutting edge of the blade shine like a mirror. Once done the knife is sharp enough to remove hair from my arm as if it were a razor blade!

Look on in Amazement!

 

That is the entire project! You should now have completed your first knife and have the knowledge and know how to make many more. I would try different metals for your second blade and a different shape. My second knife I decided to use a piece of aluminum which is never used for blade making because of it's soft properties. My aluminum knife weighs less than a sheet of paper and is so sharp I used it to shave the hair off the back of my neck this morning before work! A fantastic tool that will surely come in handy during the Apocalypse. Well I'm not so sure about that. Really I only made this aluminum blade because I had some aluminum bar stock handy and I read online that you can not make a knife blade from aluminum. The mass public says its impossible and upon performing a search from aluminum knife, Google only returns results of knives with aluminum handles. It is true, aluminum is not a choice for knife making. So, I wanted to see if I could form aluminum into the shape of a blade and then sharpen it to hold an edge capable of cutting paracord and shaving hair from skin. It is possible ladies and gentlemen, I have done it, it can be done!!! Take that to the bank naysayers! HA!

The Aluminum Tanto

I am in the process of grinding the edge onto a Modified GI Tanto blade knife that is the size of a Machete. I am using steel for this blade. At almost 18" in length with a peak blade width of 2" this knife will weigh in somewhere between 10 and 15lbs when done and will be able to hack the arms and legs off any person or animal that gets between me and my surviving. I will post pictures of the finished product when it is complete, for your viewing pleasure!

Enhancements

After finishing the project as outlined above I started thinking of ways to polish the blade of my knife to achieve a shine like any other knife you might buy at a store that was produced in a factory and cut on CNC machines. This process may dull the knife a bit but wont take the edge off, so it can be easily sharpened again after your done. Feel free to stick this part in at the point of the process where you are done filing and using the dremel.  Put the knife, handle first, in your vise, blade out.  Using a sander with 60 or 80 grit paper (the lower the better), hand sander, belt sander or orbital sander will all work, sand the entire blade on both sides, from edge to edge. This will remove any scratches and scrapes left behind from the files and grinder. The blade should have a flat silver color now, looking very dull but no deep scratches.  Switch to a higher grit paper 120 or 220 and repeat the process. This will smooth out the blade even more. I did not go high but on my Modified GI Tanto, I will go all the way to 1000 grit to see what kind of effect I can achieve. I wanted this first knife to have a rough somewhat primitive look to it, I mean seriously, it was made in my garage from a piece of scrap steel right? After sanding the next step is to use the grey polishing wheels that come in the polishing and cutting kit for the dremel. These wheels are hard like a cutting or grinding wheel but are really like 4000 grit stones that will put a shine on any metal surface. Run this polishing wheel over the entire blade, both sides, including the blades edge. The blade will now have a mirror shine characteristic to it! Your almost done. Take the polishing wheels for the dremel (whitish, cream colored cotton wheel), with the dremel on high touch it to the polishing compound and begin to polish the entire knives blade, both sides including the edge. Wipe clean when done with a soft terry cloth and resharpen your knife on the whetstones. Look on in amazement for a second time as you should be able to see your reflection in the blade now! Check out the several pictures of my finished blade, polished and sharpened. Notice I left part of the steel's original coating on to give it that primitive look I was talking about earlier. I still polished this coating, so some came off and what is left reflects like a mirror but some stayed on. I think it looks really neat. To each his own though.   FYI - No two pictures below are the same, some look close to the other but the angle of the blade has changed with the lighting to help show the reflections off different sides and angles of the blade.

Additional Info

Upon doing more research into the topic of Metallurgy, I have found that dependent on the type of steel used to make your blade it may or may not need to be annealed before working with it and tempered when the knife has been formed before adding your handle. If you are using steel from a lawn mower blade, leaf spring, or file, then these must be annealed before you work with them. This means to soften the metal. Now don't get me wrong you can grind them into the shape you want but it will take a while to do. I was beginning to wonder why I was breaking metal blades for my Jig Saw and it was taking metal drill bits almost 20 minutes to drill through a pieces of Steel bar stock that I purchased from the hardware store. The steel had been hardened and was ready to be used as is. It was not meant to be ground up. To soften the steel before working with it you can do the following. Build a small controlled fire, add coal, and let it go out. You will want the hot coals to burn for a long period of time. If you've ever played with fire you should know that hot coals or a burning wet log can burn for hours or days even. Place the steel that you will be using into the hot coals and leave it for 4 to 6 hours, overnight will do as well. Remove and let cool naturally by air. The steel has now been softened and shouldn't break any bits or blades unless your tools are just cheap! Once done cutting your knife and grinding the edge you must temper the steel. Tempering is a process that makes the steel harder but not brittle. It hardens the steel for use as a tool but leaves the edges ductile so that they don't break but bend to an extent. To temper at home, preheat your oven to 450 degrees, then place your knife into the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the steel and let cool. It should be a yellow to straw color when removed. This means the steel has been successfully tempered. If you can achieve a blue to purple color then the steel has been hardened the most it can possibly be. This would be ideal but not likely to be achieved in a kitchen oven, possibly a high powered ceramic oven that some often have in their garages could achieve this. I do not believe it is or was necessary for me to do any of this with the steel bar i used for this project as it was already annealed, hardened and tempered at the factory before being shipped to the store. I was able to make a knife from the steel and sharpen it to a fine cutting edge. I did think it necessary to include this information for those that are contemplating the idea of making a knife or knives that might be used as tools of survival as it will then become necessary for them to make sure the steel has been through the appropriate processes so that it does not break or lose its edge quickly. Who knows when you might need to cut somethin'.

UPDATE - Modified GI Tanto

I wanted to make pics available of my latest finished blade - the Modified GI Tanto that was mentioned a few times above. Some of the steps in making a knife, depicted this blade in the pictures above as well. Well, its done! All 16", polished with 1000 grit Wet Sandpaper (Getting a rub down with 2000 grit this weekend to help increase that mirror shine). Let me know what you think in the comment section. Time to start on another blade. The next few knives I will be coating with a Matte Black Alumahyde II Gun Coating for a true tactical look, stay tuned to see how they turn out.

Notice the marks left on the blade, it still needs some work. As soon as I got a mirror shine on it, I had to sharpen it to see how well it would function in different situations. This blade is an awesome knife/machete combo blade. Sharp as a razor but hard and sturdy enough to chop wood and foliage without damaging and dulling the blade.

Once I obtain some 2000 grit and possible 3000 grit paper this weekend I will be refiling and sanding the blade down again to remove that last bit of coating peaking upward from the paracord handle and will work on getting the rest of the grinding marks off the blade so that I can achieve a high quality crafted knife appearance.

Notice the cut out for the pointer finger on the top section of the handle. The handle on this blade had to be thick in order to control such a massive blade and get good leverage when using it as a machete but felt awkward as a straight handle. The dip in the handle gives the bearer of this blade a more ergonomic feel when gripping and using this blade.

Angled toward the plant, attempting to show the mirror shine that 1000 grit paper brought out. Click on image to view at full resolution and you'll see the plant's reflection really shines off this blade.

Both Tanto blades that I have cut and ground. I hadn't used or owned a Tanto blade until recently and now I can't see ever owning another drop point knife again, the angle on these is spectacular. I think modern day/tactical Bowie knife when I look at Modified GI Tanto blade on the right and tactical kitchen knife when I look at the blade on the left!