FORGED: Making a Knife with Traditional Blacksmith Skills

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CHAPTER I
What is the Frontier or “Work” Knife?
The Frontier knife was around long before there was an American “Frontier”.
This style knife can be viewed in books and museums in many countries and
cultures, ancient and contemporary, around the globe. They consist of blade and
handle—as basic as it gets. The Frontier style of that simple blade and handle
seems to be universal. From Irish Celts to Peruvian Incas and the Alaskan Aleut;
they all came up with the same style.
In North America the design ranges from straight points, to drop points, to clip
points with guards, or no guards, from small to large blades. Then there were
English, Dutch and French trade knives of the 1700s that looked like chunky
little Bowies (long before Bowies) and small to large butcher knives. Add to that
skinning knives, carving knives, scalping knives, fighting knives and all manner
of utility and cleaving knives.
Tradesmen in every period developed specialty knives to work leather into
shoes and saddles, canvas into sails and sacks, wood into baskets and bowls
and prairie sod into homesteads. Every adventurer and settler flooding into the
American heartland carried an abundance of knives and no doubt used them for
their original purpose and beyond. History records them being called Bowies or
“long” knives or simply “big” knives. Could they all be considered “Frontiers”?
From what I can tell “Frontier” was a term made popular by twentieth century
Mountain-Man/Buck-Skinner re-enactors for their big all-purpose belt knife or
smaller patch knife. However, even earlier, around the turn of the 20th century,
the Schrade Knife Company made a pocket and fixed blade knife series that
carried the name “Frontier”, and they still do (now made in China since 2004).
In 1956 as a twelve-year-old boy in Tampa, Florida, I had a Western Auto, mango
killing, Davy Crockett, “Bowie” type knife with a Bakelite sheath and handle
that got me into big trouble. As an adult my friend Gus, who taught me knifemaking,
called the Frontier simply a “Work Knife”.
Made popular by the battle of the Alamo (1836) the “Bowie” became the term
used, right up until about 1890, for any all-purpose, large camp, homestead and/
or fighting knife. Bowies and Frontiers were carried by trappers, mountain men,
waggoneers, gamblers, homesteaders, buffalo hunters, Civil War soldiers, Indian
fighting soldiers, or soldier fighting Indians residing in or traveling between the
Mississippi River and the California shore.
During that era Bowies or Frontiers were a constant companion to the pioneer
packing a single-shot, muzzle-loading rifle or pistol. If their one-shot firearms
were ineffective the only protection these frontiersmen had in close quarters as a

second line of defense from bear or river pirates was their big knife. Old tintype
photos, from those early times, reveal their Bowies/Frontiers always being worn
or brandished proudly and out front.
They called them Bowies, but we are told by historians that Bowie knives varied
widely in overall size, blade design, and handle style. The Bowie of today looks
nothing like those first Bowies. To the folks of that era the word “Bowie” was a
general term for any big, long, sharp knife. Today we usually regard a Bowie to
have a clip point, a double quillon (aka quillion) and a fancy coffin style handle
design, while a Frontier we view as a drop point with no guard and a simple
handle. If you are not familiar with some of those terms, you soon will be.
Read the True West magazine article about the Bowie knife by acclaimed historian
of the American West, Phil Spangenberger. It is an excellent short history of the
Bowie, the Americans that carried them, and its cousin, the Frontier.
Frontiers and Bowies were no doubt made by both urban and rural blacksmiths.
They supplied the cutlery needs of the “Go West Young Man” pioneers on that
great crusade sparked by John O’Sullivan and his belief in the inevitability of
Manifest Destiny.
The Frontier knife taught in this book is a simple, all-purpose knife with a
wooden handle, no guard, three copper rivets, and a five-inch, drop point
blade, just as those knives of days gone by. The skills gained from this build will
prepare you for a more involved design on your next build. Your Frontier will
look and perform exactly like those few vintage, well worn blades still around
that survived the actual frontier. By completing the Frontier as explained in this
book you are joining in the historic experience of making a knife that is truly an
American classic and will become a treasured family heirloom.
The Bowie (top) with its clip point and finger guard is designed as a fighting knife. The Frontier (bottom)
is more of a multipurpose blade with a drop point and simpler handle construction.
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Forging in the Traditional Way
Forging is forging is forging, traditional or “modern”, hand-held hammer, power
hammer, hydraulic press or what-have-you. Forging is forging. However, forging
a knife in the traditional way is not just pounding a piece of steel into a rough
blade-like shape, laying the hammer down, and then grinding to completion.
Traditional forging means little or no stock removal by grinding, and shaping
with hammer alone.
Historically the smith forged much the same as we do, the difference being, he
ground much less or not at all. Other than files, hand-stones or a foot or hand
cranked sharpening round stone he had no grinding method or apparatus that
could come close to a modern stone or belt grinder. He formed knives and set
their bevels with only his hammer. He connected converging lines and dissimilar
thicknesses while maintaining overall balance and weight. He honored complex
blade geometry and final surface appearance while sustaining the desired width
and breadth from pommel to tip, all the while keeping everything straight and
true without burning it up. Traditionally the smith put more time and hammer
strikes on the front end of the project and less time on the back end without
major stock removal in the completion of his knife.
TIP: Watch some videos of farriers making tongs, forge tools and horseshoes. That
is traditional blacksmithing! Also view videos of Alec Steele making his threepound
hammers. They give the rest of us an idea of what traditional forging is all
about. It’s about hammer control, eye-hand coordination, speed, power and most
importantly, telling the steel where to go.
Old-Timers and Their Forging Techniques
The old-timers forged their blades this way for three reasons:
The first was that iron and especially steel were, for many centuries, precious
materials (i.e. hard to come by) until the Bessemer process came along in 1856.
Smiths were not about to grind away, even if they could, half of what cost so much.
Since the beginning, forge welding a steel bit into the edge of an iron ax, chisel or
knife saved steel. Conservation of material was paramount to the smith because
there was so little of it. Even well into the 19th century, rural smiths made their
steel go as far as it could. One of my favorite memories was helping Ben Deal
point a plow with an old rasp (note: both Jim and Ben Deal had acquired Rural
Blacksmithing degrees from Tuskegee University in Alabama shortly after WWI).
The second was that the complex process of bringing power and abrasives,
usually sandstone, together in a readily available and dependable form was
not always available to the frontier blacksmith. There were examples in history
where independent smiths or other craftsmen developed ingenious devices and
contraptions for forming metal and wood but they were not in the mainstream
of development and production.

And the third was that stock removal, until relatively modern times, could
not compete with the work-a-day-blacksmith for time expended, quality of, or
the production of goods. For countless generations they were truly artisans in
iron and steel; they just didn’t know they were. To them it was a day’s work;
“Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose”.
Daily they forged, forcing and finessing lumps of steel into functional implements,
apparatus, utensils, old-time paraphernalia and of course, blades, using just a
hammer and a handful of hardy and fuller tools. Those old smiths could produce a
near-finished plow part, wagon fitting, kitchen spoon, mason’s chisel or knife blade
by hammer pounding alone. For centuries in Europe, North America, Asia and
across the globe, they were the black metal “smyths”— the masters of their craft.
Traditional blacksmithing can still be seen at places such as Colonial Williamsburg
in Virginia, The National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee,
The Blacksmith Museum in Elk City, Oklahoma, The Old Millstone Forge in New
Jersey, The Museums at Lisle Station Park in Illinois, and many local history
museums and settlements across our great land.
Forge to Finish
A smith of old cleaned up his work but most likely didn’t polish up a blade to make
it glisten like a piece of jewelry. We do. The occasional presentation knife or sword,
made for the king or a wealthy knight or later a railroad executive, was probably
finished bright. When families or soldiers passed armor, weapons and tools down
through generations they remained bright through constant use and cleaning. Much
of a museum’s restoration of ancient weapons is just that, rust prevention and rust
removal from tools and weapons neglected for extremely long periods.
When steel or iron is bright its surface must be repeatedly rubbed down with
creek sand or coated with pitch, painted or constantly oiled to keep the rust at bay.
Rust is the enemy. Paint has been used since the beginning to protect wood and
metal. I learned at the Tower of London that full-suit armor was usually painted
on the inside surface to prevent rusting caused by the presence of constant body
moisture. Most craftsmen, cabinetmakers, shipwrights or blacksmiths, through
the ages, brewed their own paint, and each recipe or even each batch was different.
Commercial paints for metal or other surface coverings, finishing techniques,
protective chemicals and polishing equipment were only marginally effective or
weren’t universally utilized until the latter end of the nineteenth century.
The simplest of a wire brush didn’t come along commercially until late in the 19th
century (John Osborn, 1887). Over the centuries many a knife and smith-made tool
were completed with only the working edge having a shine from the apprentice’s
file or stone. The remainder of the edge or blade remained black as the day it came
from the forge. But otherwise, that black oxidation on the steel from the coal fire and/
or an oil quenching (explained in Chapter VI) stayed with the blade a long time.
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That oxidized surface has been used by smiths since forging began as a form of
covering to protect the bare metal that’s underneath from rust’s attack. A hot
beeswax finish is the most notable ancient form of protection which we know and
still use today.
Raw, bare, working steel is rarely seen, then or now, as it will rust away. Today
we cover our steel in many ways such as painting, galvanizing, Parkerizing,
chromate conversion and bluing. All of these are some form of chemical treatment
to or on the steel’s surface. Rust is the primary reason that stainless steel knives
were developed. Stainless was first called “Rust-less Steel”. Stainless is popular
for knives today because of the rust inhibitors it contains.
TECHNICAL ADVANCES USEFUL IN KNIFE FINISHING
Steel Wool: England, 1896.
Factory Made Paint: David Averill, 1867.
Commercial Sandpaper: Isaac Fisher, 1834.
Belt Grinder: Otis Davidson, 1894.
Sanding Machine: Edward Fischer, 1924.
Traditional Forging Today
We will make a knife much the way it was done in olden days—FORGED. At
times it may seem difficult… and that is because it is. There are about 300 things
that can go wrong when making a knife either the traditional way or by stock
removal. Our job is to make as few mistakes as possible and know what to do when
something does go south. I’ll do my best to make the process understandable,
accomplishable and enjoyable.
I have taught others how to do this for some forty years. By learning these skills,
you will help keep the knowledge of blacksmithing alive. Also, you and I will
then have a partnership in this great chain of blacksmithing knowledge, linking
us to smiths of the past… all brothers and sisters at the anvil.
TIP: View the NOVA program, The Viking Sword. It is an outstanding study about
steel, the Vikings, and a Wisconsin smith all brought together by carbon.
Progressive Forging Stages of the Frontier Knife
The storyboard on the next page shows you the progressive nature of basic
forging and forge-beveling. Like all smith projects it shows the step-by-step,
gradual development of the knife handle and blade from a simple billet. You
should consult these images from time-to-time as your knife progresses. Visualto-three-dimensional
expression is truly a helpful process and the smith’s friend.
Chapter IV breaks down each step of the forge-beveling process with additional
instruction, drawings and photographs.
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You will connect eye-hand coordination with speed and force. Practice both
indexing and coverage for a lath strip or two. After completing a lath strip
divided with 1-inch dots do the same exercises with ½-inch dots. Then do the
same thing with 1/4-inch dots. Sections of lath can be held with the vice grips and/or
the knife tongs. When you finally hit actual hot steel this muscle memory exercise
will pay big dividends.
Forging the Knife Handle
We begin forging with the handle because forging the blade first would require
you to grip the thin finished blade with tongs or vice grips and then forge the
handle. A blade-first sequence would surely result in the blade being misshaped
or otherwise damaged by the gripping pressure of the tongs or vise grips while
you forge the handle.
Remember that the knife billet is 1/8-inch thick, 1-inch wide and eight-inches long,
with a notch at the mid-way point of four inches (for info on the notch see previous
section: Bar Stock Used for the Frontier Knife).
Blade Geometry
Before your first hammer blow, understanding knife blade geometry and
terminology (see figure below) will be essential for our author-to-reader
communication and for your success. A knife is thick at the spine, thin at the
cutting edge, and narrow and pointy at the tip. A bevel has to be forged from
cheek to cutting edge and done at the proper angle. The handle must have a length
and width that conform to the user’s hand and which “feels” right. The knife’s
overall appearance should be pleasing to the eye and it should be balanced in
the hand. All the various elevations and angles of its hammered surface should
merge into each other with gradual, graceful lines delivered by you in a few
hectic yet measured seconds. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have your intended
blade geometry in your mind’s eye before bringing your hot steel to the anvil.
The forging of a blade is not unlike sculpting with a hammer. And like a sculptor it
has always been a helpful thing for me to sketch the intended blade in a full-scale
drawing, sometimes even making a three-dimensional wooden or clay model.
Either of these allow for that eye-hand-brain connection we spoke of earlier. It
also encourages a creative approach giving greater control to the artisan smith.
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The Handle
Begin your Frontier knife by forging the handle. It doesn’t matter which fourinch
section you begin with to make the handle; the remaining four-inch section
will become the blade. Place the billet in the forge and heat it from its end to the
notch in the middle which you previously made. The notch allows your eye to
separate the handle steel from the blade steel when hammering. When striking
blows on the handle don’t let any blows fall beyond the notch and onto the blade
section.
The primary forging technique in forming the handle will be drawing out.
Drawing out is a thinning of the width and lengthening of the billet through
overlapping hammer blows. The steel is in a malleable state when hot, and the
hammer blows push the steel away from the center of the hammer’s face. This
makes the width of the handle thinner while its length increases slightly.
The forging of the handle will take several heats. Each heat consists of putting
the piece one time into the forge until it becomes a bright red/orange color and
then forging (hammering) until the color is almost gone. The steel, when the
red color is gone, is considered “cold” and can’t be hammered until more heat
is applied to it in the forge. Hammering your billet at this cold temperature will
damage the steel, so take another heat.
As mentioned, forge the handle end of the billet first. Secure the blade end of
the billet with your vise grips. You are going to reduce the width of the handle
from 1-inch to ¾-inch by drawing out. You are only reducing the width of the bar
by 1/4-inch, so be gentle. Remember the entire drawing out process will require
several trips to the forge then to the anvil and back to the forge, etc. Take your
time.
Drawing the Handle
The first hammer blow with the round face hammer. Subsequent overlapping blows will follow all the way
to the notch and the opposite billet edge will be flat against the anvil face for the entire trip.
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BLACKSMITH SECRET: Whether you use coal or gas, there are hot and (relatively)
cool spots in your forge. Move your steel once or twice when heating to get an
even heat on your billet.
If these drawing out procedures sound difficult at first, that’s because they are.
Read the above a few times, look at the drawings and, if possible, watch a video
on the subject. There’s one of me doing this on YouTube. Then practice. Some
students prefer to practice on inexpensive low-carbon (1018) mild steel bars of
the same dimension before they move on to their high-carbon billet. The 1018
will also be easier to move around, when hot, than the 1080.
TIP: Remember that you are only taking the billet from 1-inch to ¾ of an inch.
That is only a quarter-of-an-inch difference. It may become flatter quicker than
you think. Adjust your power.
After each vertical pass that draws-out the handle, you should make a series of
light horizontal “flattening” blows with the flat face of your rounding hammer.
This process will retain the overall 1/8-inch thickness of the handle and “dress”
both edges of the handle. A flatter tool (if you have one) placed on the flat of the
handle and struck with a sledgehammer will result in the same outcome—a flat
handle.
The flatter tool does just that; it makes the entire surface flat as a pancake.
BLACKSMITH SECRET: When returning your billet to the forge think about what
you are going to do next before you bring the hot steel out again. Place your piece
in such a manner so that you can remove it and hammer immediately without
losing precious seconds looking and thinking about where to place it on the anvil
or hit the piece next. Plan ahead.
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The completed handle will now be slightly longer than its original 4-inch length
because of your having drawn out the metal, Drawing-out rearranges the steel in
the handle. The final length added, due to the drawing out process, will be about
1-inch, sometimes more. Note the drawing below comparing the original billet
length to your knife at this stage.
The handle, after forging, will be about ½-inch longer than its original four inches due to the drawing
out process.
This particular handle went from the original billet length of four-inches to almost five-inches.
The suggested handle length of 4-1/2-inches may be too long or too short for some
smiths’ grips. It can be reduced or increased in length to fit the builder’s hand
and grasp. Often, it’s helpful for you to hold another knife that fits your hand,
while holding a ruler in your other hand for precise measurement.
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CHAPTER III
Forging the Blade
When completed, the blade, like the handle, will be about 1-inch longer.
There are laws of physics, influences of thermal dynamics, and mysteries of
blacksmithing that govern the happenings of what follows in Chapters III
and IV. Most of them concern the mechanical and physical properties of steel
which affect its ductility, elasticity, thermal conductivity and microstructure. As
blacksmiths we may not fully understand these compositional and engineering
dynamics, but we must respect their dominance of and unrelenting predictability
regarding hot steel. Control them and you will control the steel.
Gus put it this way one summer afternoon as we were forging: “Paul, you have
to tell the steel where to go. All by itself it doesn’t know. If a smith pulls hot iron
or steel from the fire and just begins to hammer away without understanding the
partnership between himself and his metal nothing good will happen.”
So then, this control of and “partnership” with hot iron is what happens next.
Remember…. “I AM THE BOSS OF MY STEEL”.
BLACKSMITH SECRET: When compelled to use your fingertips to feel if a piece of
steel is hot or not, DON’T! Use the back of your fingers and not your fingertips. A
burn on your fingertips will hurt for a long time and make you dysfunctional for a
few days or longer. Whereas if you use the back of your fingers, while still painful,
the burnt flesh experience won’t slow down your progress.
Pointing the Tip of the Billet (Blade):
Look at the back edge of a well-made knife and you’ll see the full thickness of
the blade at the ricasso gradually getting thinner as your eye moves to the point.
This is good. That gradual line begins at the first heat of blade formation.
A top-down view of a finished blade.
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To prepare for the counter-bending step we will point (not a finished point but a point-like shape on the
tip of the billet). When this is done the blade, like the handle, will be about 1-inch longer and will be ready
for the counter-bending step of forming the blade.
Pointing and Thinning of the Tip
The goal now is to put some slight thinning and pointing to the tip of the blank
(i.e. the bar, or billet). Pull your piece from the heat and place what is to become its
cutting edge up, vertical and perpendicular to the far edge (top) of the anvil. Raise
your left vise-grip hand up, bringing the bar from edge-flat on the anvil to about
a 45° angle. Lock your left hand holding the vise grips against your body. Whack
with the flat face of the hammer coming from the far side of the anvil. Hammer
back toward yourself. It will be an awkward angle for you, but it’s necessary. In
the blacksmith business it’s called upsetting on the angle.
Upsetting on the angle puts a slight point on the billet and moves some of the metal mass toward the end,
making the billet a bit longer and fatter.
The “Bird’s Beak” happens naturally when “bunching” hot metal.
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Building the Railroad Spike Jig
Counter-bending begins with the counter-bending jig. These are made by forging
a steel bar ¾-inch to 1-inch square and about five-inches long into a “bottom swage”
device. This looks something like a cradle. It can be placed into your anvil’s hardy
hole or locked in a vise. You don’t necessarily need to weld the hardy stud on the
bottom, just lock it in the vise. A banana would fit nicely into this cradle (see page
48). File a groove into the top right edge to “catch” the point. I use railroad spikes
to make this jig. On page 49 is a drawing of the exact radius of the curve taken from
my shop notes. As you make more knives you may choose to change that radius
depending upon factors between you, your tools, and your steel.
Counter-Bending
Blade across railroad spike jig just before the first strike.
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Blade distorted from the force of the strike. Note the tip is to the viewer’s left and the blade is on its side. These
kinds of bends are difficult to avoid due to the force of the hammer’s blow and the thinness of the billet.
Blade straightened out and ready for another blow. Note that the blade tip is pushed further up the hill
of the jig.
Note the “air” between the billet and the spike. The blade is almost resting at the bottom of the jig. The
next blow will force it completely into the concavity of the railroad spike jig.
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The blade is traveling uphill and is ready for another strike. Note the tiny bit of air beneath the blade.
The nearly completed counter-bend awaits the hammer’s final blow to close the sliver of distance between the
orange-hot billet/blade and the bottom of the railroad spike swage.
A successful counter-bend resting within the swage. Note the distinct bent blade half of the billet and the other
straight handle half. There are rarely counter-bends that are exactly alike. All are slightly different. Get yours as
close to the pictures and drawings as you can.
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There will be one or two additional heats and taps on the anvil face to re-flatten and
realign the billet. Straighten the handle along both the handle edge and the flat axis.
Poor Smith’s Counter-Bending Jig
A third way to make a hot-blade counter-bending jig is to place the blade between
two ¾-inch square blocks of wood and secure them 4-inches apart. Position your
hot bar belly up from tip to notch. Hit the bar hard in the middle a few times
and you’ll be somewhere “in the neighborhood”. Remember that the extent to
which you counter-bend depends on how much you intend to draw and thin
the opposite edge, as dictated by Newton’s law. Blacksmithing sometimes is
“somewhere in the neighborhood” (Newton didn’t say that - I did). Keep the
handle section arrow straight.
Using any of the three methods, where the handle meets the blade (the ricasso),
there will sometimes be a slight funny little “S” curve due to some mystery forces.
It’s Newton’s fault again. Use your flat-face hammer and make everything true
to the world. Consult the storyboard. Make your finished billet look like the
drawing and the photos. On page 49 is a full-sized drawing of the swage and
billet. Please feel free to trace or photocopy this drawing for your use.
Once the bar has the proper blade counter-bend from tip to ricasso and a straight
handle from ricasso to pommel you are ready to forge-bevel the cutting edge.
Poor Smith’s Counter-Bending Jig.
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This represents the blade/billet after the counter-bend. The counter-bend is about thirty-five degrees.
48

Make Your Own Railroad Spike Jig
This full scale drawing is a tracing of the actual RR swage
in my shop. Please feel free to copy it and make your own.
This curve is part of a 4-inch radius.
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CHAPTER IV
Forge-Beveling
TIP: The most important principle in this section is to OVERLAP HAMMER
BLOWS. The right edge of your previous hammer blow becomes the center point
of your next hammer blow.
Forge-beveling allows a consistent pushing of the hot steel in all directions
at each blow. The physics are consistent, predictable and reliable. At each
strike the force of the rounding hammer head pushes the bottom half of the blade
and the spine in opposite directions. The tip-to-choil forces are contained for the
most part by the blade’s mass. It’s much like when the smith makes breakfast
sausage patties. Imagine pushing the center of that sausage patty down with
the heel of your hand (hammer) against the counter (anvil). The patty spreads
out in all directions with a dimple in the center, the same as the steel. With
repeated overlapping blows the bevel thins and widens downward as the spine
stretches upward. The resulting geometry is a thinning and reshaping of the
blade between the cheek line and the cutting edge. A bevel is forged and formed
with your rounding hammer, anvil and blacksmith’s eye.
Once forge-beveling is mastered you can actually form a hollow “grind” by
hollow forging (another lesson, another book).
NOTE: Look at a knife with the pommel to the left and the point to the right,
cutting edge down and spine up. For reference and description this is the right
side of the blade.
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This is the RIGHT side (i.e. right-hand side) of the knife blade.
Setting the Bevel
The forge-beveling procedure is advanced forging. Beveling with a hammer is
a Blacksmith Secret used by few these days. Learn this method and you will
certainly be connected to the smiths of old.
This forge-beveling procedure takes me six heats or more, at minimum; three
on each side. Theoretically, one heat per line, three lines per side (explained
below in Half, Fourth, Eighth). Make these passes down the bottom half of the
blade traveling its full length. Because you might be a beginner it may take many
more passes than six. You may need more heats due to being hammer shy or
because of rookie hesitation. You may start and stop frequently due to underheating,
overheating, dropped blades, re-positioning your piece or “Where’s my
hammer?”. All of those are OK. We all do them.
Half, Fourth, Eighth
Let’s go through the forge-beveling principle. First think cross-section geometry.
Develop a visual in your brain of the relative distance from the center point of
the hammer face to the bottom one-half of your blade as you travel along its
length from ricasso to tip.
Do this by visualizing one-half, one-fourth, one-eighth. If we were to saw a
blade vertically in half and view it in cross section, we would see that its shape
is thickest at the top, along its spine. It holds that dimension down to the cheek
(about the halfway point) and then dramatically loses thickness as it approaches
the cutting edge. This is the bevel. Your bevel. Think halfway from cheek line to
cutting edge. This is the 1/2 line.
This traditional way to set this bevel can only be acquired with dozens of
latitudinal hammer strikes passing from left to right at those three descending
levels: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. Remember one-half, one-fourth, one-eighth.
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BLACKSMITH SECRET: To gauge forging heat have a wooden box close by and
away from any direct light. Hold your blade in the box to see the true forging heat.
Even when hot the “red” is sometimes difficult to see in a lighted room. However,
the red will show in the shade of your box. This means you are above forging heat
and will thus avoid potential edge cracks. Remember this is high carbon steel
and your working parameters are narrower. Iron can be worked over a greater
temperature without damage. At the end of each forging and before you lose
forging heat in your blade use the last few seconds to straighten and align your
work. Make all lines right with the world.
Forge-Beveling
The successful counter-bend is placed at the “bottom” of the anvil with the choil just at the anvil’s corner
next to the table. Several hammer blows are placed at the halfway point/line and then the hammer travels
down the blade to the smith’s right.
This shot shows the smith’s hammer making the first blow at the choil.
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This same blade is cooled to black heat. Note the overlapping hammer blows at the bottom half of the
blade while, at the top, along the spine and above the blows, it remains untouched by the hammer’s
rounded face.
The blade is heated, flipped to the “top” of the anvil, tipped to 12° and the same process is repeated.
Photo of the same cooled blade. Note that it is beginning to smooth and the counter-bend is beginning to
straighten. The soapstone line divides the bevel from the spine area.
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Here the smith is forging the bevel at the top of the anvil. The cooler, dark area, shows where the hammer
has just fallen as the smith indexes from the choil toward the tip. Note that the edge of the blade is barely
at the edge of the anvil so the hammer can “fall-off” and not strike the anvil’s edge.
Remember to always do the tipping 10-12°on each and every forge-bevel trip down the blade.
This is after a first pass on both sides and at the 1/2 line of the knife from choil to tip. Note the counterbend
has just started to straighten out.
56

The second pass on both sides at the 1/4 line brings the blade a little straighter with the bevel dropping
down a bit more and becoming thinner.
The third pass on both sides at the 1/8 line brings the blade nearly straight and the edge now has the
beginning of that “dime” thinness.
This particular blade took a fourth pass but as can be seen the spine is thick and the bevel is nearly
formed. It took some tweaking here and there to align the blade with the handle but now it is ready for
its profile to be shaped.
57

This photo shows that same knife blank with
a rough soap stone profile. The original billet
demonstrates where we were and to where we got
with lots of heats and hammer blows.
58
This photo shows the same blade next to an original
billet, comparing the thickness of the forged edge to
the unforged edge. Note the uniformity in thickness/
thinness of the forged edge.
Another Way to Explain This:
How to Set the Bevel with Hammer and Anvil
Take a heat. Place the bar at the bottom left hand edge of the anvil with only a trace
of the anvil visually showing around the bottom corner of the bar (see drawing).
The notch will be at the very left-bottom corner face of the anvil. Your first blow
will be just below the middle of the blade at the front edge of the ricasso. In the
drawing I have marked that spot with an “X”. Tip the blade to 10° - 12° and place
a half-dozen solid blows on top of each other at the “X”. This will smush-out that
entire corner of the bar, at the choil and
at the ½ mark. It will also begin to set the
bevel angle. Later the smushed part can
be forged and filed square. Take a heat.
Because your piece is shaped like a
downward banana, you’ll have to index
the next series of heats-and-hits. All your
blows along the 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 lines will
start at that “X” spot on each of those three

lines: X at the 1/2, X at the 1/4 and X at the 1/8. Pull the bar to your left, indexing, past
the same spot on the anvil’s corner. Maintain the 10° to 12° angle. This “pull” is only
a fraction of an inch at a time. Remember the wooden lath exercise from Chapter II.
Pound down the length of the bar; hit-index-hit-index-hit-index, on-and-on to the
end of the blank. It may take twenty or thirty blows and more than one heat.
Right Side of the Knife at the Bottom of the Anvil
It sounds awkward but it’s quite efficient. Bam, bam, bam, bam…. goes the
smith. Take another heat. Flip the bar to the left side and place at the top of the
anvil. Tip to 10-12°. From that “X” spot begin the indexing and striking again.
Heats-and-hits, heats-and-hits. Strike while the iron is hot. Keep hammering in
the same anvil spot and move the bar. Index on the top anvil corner pulling
the bar left, down the left side of your billet,
overlapping your hammer blows as the bar
passes under your hammer. Bam-Bam-Bam
goes the smith. Simple! If you can hammer
to the tip without running out of heat first,
great, but if heat runs out take another
heat, tip and start where you left off. Heatstraighten-and-hit.
The sound will be bambam-bam-bam-bam
in rapid succession.
Remember the center of your next blow will
be at the right edge of your last blow.
All the way to the end. It’s a balance between heat, power, speed and accuracy.
Your banana blade will try to move and curl-up on the flat axis. After each heat
give it some light straightening-out taps with your flat hammer face. Hold the
blade at arm’s length, look down the line, see the bumps and lumps, give it some
more taps to straighten it out then back to the heat.
Same as Above Said in a Different Way
with Different Drawings
Place the bar at the anvil’s edge, tip to
12°. Strike several solid blows with your
hammer’s round face just at the halfway
point at the first “X” of the bar (at what
will become the choil) and not a fraction
above. At that same latitude travel the
distance “toward” the right, indexing
down the counter-bend curve to the tip
of the bar or as far as the heat will allow.
Go the distance. As you index “down”
the right and then the left side of the billet
(blade) increasing lengths will hang off the
anvil. Keep it level, see the drawing.
Left side of the bar (knife) at the top of the anvil.
Note the bar bending upwards. Straighten with
light taps.
59

TIP: Many smiths I see on knife videos or TV shows forge the blade’s edge smack in
the center of the anvil face! Do not do this! Three bad things happen when you do.
The first bad thing is that part of the hammer’s face/edge frequently hits the anvil
and not your piece. That transfers energy into the anvil and not your blade thus
reducing the drawing out effect sought. The second bad thing is that the repeated
hammer blows will damage the anvil face. The third bad thing is that something
other than a straight and uniform forge line is going to be made down the blade.
62
Let’s Go Over the Forge-Beveling Technique
Just Once More
Striking at the bottom of the anvil, index your way down the blade at the 1/2 line
to the point. Flip to the left side at the top of your anvil. Tip to 12° and do the
same on that side, at the top of the anvil. Next pass. Start at the left-hand bottom
corner of the anvil again and forge (index) down the blade at the 1/4 line. Flip
and do the left side of the blade at the top of the anvil. Then do the same at the
bottom of the anvil on the right side of the blade at the 1/8 line. Flip. Again, down
the 1/8 line at the anvil top and stop.
TIP: Remember that the number of strikes, blows or whacks you give the blade
depends upon its response to your power, the blade’s heat level, and the weight of
the hammer. As the blade straightens out, back off on the power. The blade should
get straight about the same time the bevel gets thinner.
Hold the blade out and away from you at arm’s length. Look down the line,
heat and tap, straighten it out with light hammer taps, look again, hold all sides
against a metal ruler for a straight edge to all compass points, spine, edge and
both sides.
If you see spots on the blade that you missed or to which you gave only light
hammer blows, heat and tap a couple times at that point. Check compass points
and align. Take out those little waves in the cutting edge now. They will be most
difficult to remove after hardening. Use Heat and Lock Technique 2 explained
and illustrated on pages 69-71.
Take out little lumps and bumps and check the overall thickness for high/low
points and all-around appearance. If you have a flatter in your tool inventory
now is the time to use it on both the handle and cheek. A flatter will not affect
the bevel. Run soapstone along the surface of the blade and bevel to see telltale
highs and lows and hooks and crooks. Fix them with light taps of your flat-face
hammer, after heating of course.
A good habit to get into early in your knifemaking experience is to lay the blade on
a flat surface and check for flatness. See if it spins. If it doesn’t, it’s flat.

Another habit to form is to lay it aside, let it cool to room temperature, and
then feel your blade. Not only will you be normalizing it by doing this but your
fingers will join with your eyes and give unmistakable messages to your brain
about the blade’s overall geometry as they travel along its surface. Your brain is
a wonderful thing. It helps you to become the BOSS of your STEEL.
The Most Common Mistakes Made by Students
in Traditional Knife Forging
BLADE ONE
A correctly forged knife. The handle has been reduced to ¾-inch in width. It runs
straight and true for about 4-1/4-inches. The blade tip is correctly narrowed and
thinned with its length almost 5 inches. Total length is 9-1/4 inches. This blade is
ready for surface finishing, pre-sharpening and then heat treating.
BLADE TWO
This smith was overly aggressive with the handle. Lots of power but no control.
Those deep indentations were caused by his hammer not being parallel to the
anvil face. This could have been fixed but the smith chose to get it right on a
practice billet then start over with a new steel billet – a good choice.
63

BLADE THREE
The student’s knife is the bottom one. A perfectly forged handle, as is the blade
and its point. However, the fledgling smith over counter-bent the blade to about
90 degrees. Had I allowed her to continue through to completion the knife would
have never straightened out and would have been more of a pruning hook. The
smith started over. Note the correct counter-bend above which is at about 30°.
BLADE FOUR
This smith started with excellent hammer control forming the handle to the
correct specs. However, the point was drawn out too thin and narrow. Remember
the next step will be counter-bending which brings the blade under tremendous
stress and so it needs to be “beefy” at this stage. Blade length is already at 5-plus
inches, which is too long. That is about 3/4-inch longer than the expected finished
blade. This could have been salvaged by cutting the tip down ½-inch but the
smith chose to start over. Again, a good choice.
64

BLADE FIVE
This smith also made a beautiful handle, ¾-inch by 4-1/4-inches, outstanding.
However, when forge-beveling, his hammer blows did not follow those three
center-to-edge lines traveling choil-to-tip. His blows were all over the place
and his blade did not straighten out, nor could it have with such random and
uncontrolled strikes. Remember, place overlapping blows along those one-half,
one-quarter and one-eighth lines.
TIP: The smith can learn lots by correcting these four mistakes and others as they
acquire greater skills. However, many corrections of those mistakes are frequently
beyond the fledgling knife maker’s current ability and skill set. Those incomplete
knives can always be saved and reworked another day when your skills are refined
through practice. I usually encourage my students when making mistakes to shut
down the forge, re-read the Forge-Beveling chapter and then start over with a
fresh billet.
Going to the Grinder
As mentioned in the Introduction, we are now going to make some use of the
electric grinder, but we are only going to grind the edges.
At this point in the process, after dozens of forge-beveling blows, your blade
looks uneven, with less than straight edges, but as we proceed, it will get better.
Look at your blade; the blade edges will be uneven, gnarly, and maybe even have
a bit of a curve on top. There may be lumps in the spine due to a wild hammer
blow or two. Your edge may be wavy, maybe thick, maybe thin here and there.
In days of old the smith would have handed this gnarly blade to his apprentice
and said, “Fix this”. The apprentice could have trimmed those uneven edges out
with a hot cut or hardy then filed for an hour or so – we won’t. Hardies, hot cuts
and rookies sometimes struggle with each other.
65

72
CHAPTER V
Annealing the Blade
When a smith forges steel the crystal structure of the metal always becomes
deformed. It is stretched in some areas and “compressed” in others. The
billet or knife may look smooth on the surface, but within its microstructure
there is stress and distortion. These contorted structures are no problem in
and of themselves but in the heat treating process (explained later) they are
usually responsible for bends or cracks when the steel is oil quenched to harden
(Chapter VI). There are two procedures that “relax” and bring all the internal
microstructures into a homogenous consistency to reduce those stresses from
forging that cause bends and cracks. The first is annealing and the second is
normalizing. They are similar but there are differences.
Annealing usually is done after forge-beveling but before the sanding and filing
of the finished forged billet into a knife. Annealing brings the steel to its ultimate
“softness”, sometimes referred to by metallurgists as “dead soft”. This allows you
to file, sand and finish with the least amount of elbow grease. By slowly cooling
the steel through annealing, a large grain structure is grown while the atomic
structure within the steel modifies into a more workable consistency that will
be as even and malleable as high carbon steel can get. Later in the heat treating
process we will reduce the grain size by normalizing, quenching/hardening and
lastly, tempering.
Many of the same property changes happen to the microstructure of steel both
in annealing and in normalization—they just happen more extensively and more
slowly with annealing than with normalizing. Annealing is done to bring the
steel to an optimal “softness” for hand working while normalization prepares
the steel for the brutal business, as far as the steel is concerned, of oil hardening.
Annealing can be done in several ways. The modern way is in a furnace especially
designed for that operation. The old way is to first bring the blade to critical heat
then to bury the blade in sand, ash or vermiculite until cool (several hours).
I anneal in my gas forge. Like many smiths, I have annealed in a box of sand,
a bucket of ash or a can of vermiculite. I now anneal solely in the forge. At the
end of a day’s forging I heat and place all my blades to be annealed on the floor
of my hot gas forge. To anneal first preheat a 1-inch thick steel plate as large as
your forge floor because it’s the biggest mass and will take the longest to come
to critical heat (1500°F). Next, bring your blade(s) to be annealed to critical heat.
Then prop the plate up a bit and slide your blade(s) flat and under the plate
as evenly as possible. The plate is now on the floor of the forge and on top of
the blades. Keep the forge firing for ten minutes or so to ensure that the plate,
blade(s) and forge walls and floor are all at critical heat. Block the entrance and
all holes in the forge with fire bricks and turn the forge off. Allow the forge to cool
all night. In the morning your forge should be cool and your blades annealed.

Don’t attempt to drill or file steel that has not been annealed; it’s bad on the steel,
the equipment, and the smith.
Normalizing: (Note: the terms and chemical reactions mentioned here are
explained in more detail in the following chapter). The last normalization is
done just before the hardening quench after you have finished shaping your
blade with file and sandpaper. When normalizing you first bring the entire blade
to critical heat (1500° F) then set it aside to cool at room temperature. This allows
the trapped carbon atoms to slowly diffuse out of the ferrite structure and form
into cementite, then line themselves up with the remaining ferrite structure.
These two formations together are now called pearlite. Pearlite is a fine grained
structure that is extremely ductile. The most important result of normalization is
that it homogenizes the internal microstructure, thereby equalizing the crystalline
size and “normalizing” the consistency of the blade’s steel. This process prepares
the steel for an even hardening and tempering, with a reduced chance of bending
or cracking. Most smiths normalize one to three times over the course of blade
construction. More than three times is unnecessary.
Filing and Sanding
If I were grinding the final shape, I would turn on my Grizzly. I have nothing
against 2 x 72 belt sanders. I like mine. But… I also like the forging process that
brings a blade to near completion, then doing the final shaping and finishing
with file and sandpaper sticks. That’s how Gus did it.
Forging and filing can be almost as fast as grinding and buffing. That’s because we
have forged the knife closer to its final form and have less to remove. After forgebeveling
there is way less, hardly any, stock to be removed. Also, there are fewer
high-speed grinding mistakes resulting in half finished blades on the floor at the
end of the day. I do it old and slow. For me slow is more enjoyable and a lot quieter.
Secure a collection of files. New files are expensive. Old half-used files are just
fine and available in used tool and pawn shops, farm auctions and yard sales.
When you buy a new file purchase the best quality you can. Learn to sharpen
the old ones, they come out almost new. Half of your work will be done with
two or three flat, cross tooth and single cut large files, the other half will be with
sanding sticks.
Consult some old smithing or machine
shop publications or the internet for
proper file use and techniques like cross
filing. Effective filing is harder than you
might think but extremely satisfying. All
filing positions and processes are exactly
the same when using sanding sticks.
When files are totally worn out, they can
be made into knives.
73

Pommel Rounding
Round the knife pommel with heat and the same 45° bird’s beak action you did
for the point, except don’t make a bird’s beak or a point, make a half-round. Start
with 45° on each edge, then lightly hammer them round at the edge, and flat on
the flat. Finish by filing and sanding.
Angle Iron Knife Filing Jig
Build a knife filing jig with a foot long section of two-inch angle iron. Epoxy or
contact cement a ¼-inch x 10-inch strip of leather to each of the edges or along
the length of one edge. It is also OK to put leather on each edge and just turn
it around. I’ll show both. This rig allows you to “lock-in” your knife with vise
grips and file without damaging the “soft” edge of the blade or the soft edges of
the smith. This jig also prevents your knife from “hanging out” over the edge of
the vise which would cause you to bend your edge each time you file. This jig is
used in all the shaping, polishing and pre-sharpening phases.
Files leave scratches but that’s OK. This happens because minuscule bits of the
file or bits of the knife’s surface break away and lodge between the file teeth at a
catawampus angle. These bits are called swarf. When you push the file, the swarf
is carried along with the file and it scratches the blade’s surface. Keep a file brush
or steel wire brush handy and clean your file between each attack on the blade.
You can feel when the scratches happen; stop, clean and carry on. I like to see a
few of those random scratches in my finished blades.
Pre-Sharpening and Setting the Cutting Angle
Lock the right side of the angle iron in the vise to work the left face of your blade
and the opposite side when you work on the right face. Secure the blade with
your trusty vise grips. The leather provides a support for the thin annealed edge.
Without this the blade’s edge would bend/fold over the edge of the angle iron.
The angle iron, and the angle iron locked in the vise
74

An angle iron jig with leather strips.
The author pre-sharpening the edge while the knife is locked in the angle iron jig.
The blade locked with the vice grips. Note the blade edge resting exactly at the edge of the angle iron jig.
The forward handle line has been marked with rivet hole center punch cross marks.
75

Have sandpaper sticks prepared with 120, 220, 320 and 400 grits and gradually
work your blade’s edge from the choil down to the tip starting with the coarsest
grit.
Also, file and sand the upper flat of the blade between the cheek and spine, then
at the ricasso, the spine and slightly at the handle. Get your blade ready for heat
treatment and handle attachment. How many forge and file marks you remove
is up to your vision of what your blade should look like. I like to retain file
scratches, hammer tracks and oxidation mixed with those final sanded shiny
patches, all mixed together. Its appearance is much like a pinto horse.
BLACKSMITH SECRET: Soapy water will float away the bits of the knife cut by the
file (i.e. swarf) and file teeth that break away from the file. The soapy solution will
also keep oil and those random bits of file teeth suspended. Have a soup can of
soapy water next to your vise and dunk your file or sandpaper stick into it from
time to time.
78
Drilling the Holes for Handle Attachment
The handle will not be attached for a few steps, but the rivet holes for the scales
(the two wooden pieces for the handle) must be drilled now while the blade is in
an annealed state and before the heat treating process. Instructions on punching the
rivet holes, as was done in days of old, will be addressed at the end of this chapter.
This knife will have three 5/32-inch wide rivet holes. Drill them with a titanium
or chromium bit; steel is hard stuff. In the old days these holes were punched
to size. Even after annealing, steel is hard. Place the holes equal distances apart.
These measurements will vary as each knife will be a little different than the
next one you make. Variation and “close” are acceptable. If a smith didn’t even
measure and made three holes about where they should be it would most likely
be fine. Keep the pommel hole about 5/8-inch from the end, and the front hole
about 5/8-inch from the handle’s front edge, and the third hole between those two.
These holes will carry 5/32-inch brass tubes into which will be inserted 1/8-inch
copper rods.
The system used for the handle attachment is a Tube and Rod Peen (TRP). A
peen attachment is simply the use of a tiny section of rod called a rivet which
attaches the handle parts together. We have various other things to do in making
our Frontier knife before we attach the handle (explained in Chapter VIII) but I
will describe the TRP method below so you understand how we will be using the
rivet holes we just made.
Rivets are one of those old inventions we think little of but could not live without.
They are responsible for holding together every skyscraper since 1880, every metal
ship, until very recently, since the Monitor (1863), every iron or steel bridge since
the early 1830s, every shovel or rake, and every airplane that has ever flown since
shortly after the Wright brothers. A Boeing 747 has over a million rivets alone.

The Eiffel Tower a million and a half and an Airstream Travel Trailer about six
thousand. This modern yet ancient fastener can also be seen in tools, weapons
and machinery in museums all over the world. You have some modern examples
around the house, garage, auto and surprisingly in your computer panel board
and case construction.
For a knife, a rivet passes through both of the handle scales and the steel blade.
The protruding rivet is peened into a mushroom-like button on each side causing
a clamping effect on everything in between. Not only does the button expand at
the top and bottom ends but also down the shank of the rivet about 1/16-inch from
the surface, binding the blade and scales tightly.
When a peen connects two metals together there is rarely a problem with it working.
View peen #1; it is straight and true, mushroomed at the top and bottom as it should
be. The problem comes when there is a softer material being bound together on the
outer surface like the wooden scales of a knife. Peen #2 shows how the peen can
drop beneath the surface of the wood when peened too much or filed too close.
Unless the rivets are perfectly perpendicular to the handle, they will bend at one or
both ends causing the rivet to bend over at the top and/or the bottom end. Peen #3
is catastrophic. The holding power is greatly diminished, the joint looks ugly and
usually splits the scale. Peening successfully in wood is truly an art. It is difficult but
can be done. I and other old smiths do it all the time, but we also split scales all the
time. But remember — “There is hardly nothing we can’t fix”.
Peening in non-stabilized wood without using tubes, as the original Frontier
handles were made, will work only about 80% of the time, even for me or other
smiths who frequently peen. I have found that beginners who have never peened
anything are rarely successful performing all three peens without splitting wood
or bending rivets. By using tubes your success rate will approach 100%. Each time
you peen you will acquire more control of those subtle forces that accompany
this ancient procedure. Peen #4 is a TUBE and ROD PEEN. Note the brass jacket
around the copper rivet on Peen #4. This will be explained later.
79

CHAPTER VI
Heat Treatment
In this first part of this chapter I will explain the technical dynamics and
chemical reactions that occur within the hot steel blade. In the second part I
will cover in detail the “how to” of all four heat treatment procedures you will
use in the making of a blade: annealing, normalizing, hardening, and lastly,
tempering.
At this point your blade is ready for heat treatment. This term does not refer
to a specific procedure, but to a set of them. Under the term “heat treating” we
find procedures like annealing, hardening, tempering, quenching, carburizing,
welding, hot-forming, normalizing, and case hardening. I don’t usually use
the term “heat treatment”. I prefer to use the name of the actual procedure in
question such as annealing, hardening or tempering. But the term is commonly
used in books so you should know it and understand what it refers to.
Old time smiths didn’t use the heat treat term either. They usually used the term
“temper” which, to them, meant two procedures: (1) the combined hardening
and tempering process, and (2) the actual procedure of putting temper into
a blade observing the various color changes as heat traveled through it.
This dual use of the word “temper” resulted in terminology confusion, both
then and now. In this section we will restrict ourselves only to the four heat
treatment procedures for blade making: annealing, normalizing, hardening
and tempering.
The Stuff of Steel
A basic understanding of steel’s chemistry and microstructure is important in
being a good blacksmith. I will cover these briefly but, as I am neither a metallurgist
or engineer, I encourage you to research these principles and processes further
on your own. Talk with some (chemical) engineers and/or metallurgists, they
know this stuff.
Understand first that iron (Fe) is an element and steel is an alloy. Iron can occur
naturally but steel does not. It is produced by man. Finding iron in a usable form
is a natural rarity, other than that found in meteorites, or bog iron, and those are
not ‘pure’ iron. All have some percentages of various impurities. Modern steel
is made from the earth’s abundant iron ore deposits (rocks and minerals from
which iron can be extracted), with small and controlled quantities of carbon (less
than 2%) and other elements like manganese, nickel and tungsten. Before steel is
steel, it’s iron with no carbon.
How does that tiny bit of carbon get into the iron when making steel?
82

Almost all metals are crystalline when solid. Crystals are in turn just an orderly
arrangement of atoms. Iron atoms can be imagined as arranged and stacked
billiard balls in a three-dimensional cube. The balls represent iron atoms with
spaces in between, called lattices. These spaces are where carbon or other
impurities can lodge.
In the world of metals, crystalline (crystal) structures are usually referred
to as “grains”. When we are forging and heat treating, we are manipulating
the grain of the metal. In many cases alterations to the grain will change
the properties of the metal. Iron and especially steel have a special property
that not all metals have. Their atoms can be rearranged more than one way
with different properties which change the characteristics of the metal. These
properties can be controlled by the smith through force and heat to make the
steel hard, tough, soft or ‘springy’.
At the steel mill iron ore is melted down and carbon is added to form steel.
Adding carbon to liquid iron is something like adding sugar to hot coffee.
It will dissolve. As long as the iron atoms are arranged as austenite (which
happens above 1333°F) the carbon atoms will fill the spaces between the iron
atoms.
As the steel slowly cools (below 1333° F) the iron changes from austenite to
ferrite and the spaces between the iron atoms go back to the previous separated
arrangement. When that happens the carbon atoms get kicked out of the lattice
structure and have to find somewhere to live. They locate along the edges of the
iron crystals. When this happens, most of the carbon will chemically combine with
some of the iron to make a compound called iron carbide, commonly referred
to as cementite. That’s a little bit like finding sugar crystals in the bottom of the
coffee mug if you don’t drink all the coffee and let it get cold. Carbon atoms are
much smaller than iron atoms and can easily fit into the spaces between atoms
in the austenite arrangement, but not the ferrite arrangement. That’s why they
move out.
REMINDER: At temperatures below 1333° F the phase is called ferrite and above
that temperature it is called austenite.
NOTE: 1333° F, where this change occurs, is often referred to as “The Critical
Heat”. Metallurgists call it the “Transformation Temperature”. In actual practice
the transformation can take place over a range of temperatures. The precise
start and finish temperatures vary with the type of steel, but for most plain
carbon steels the upper limit is slightly less than 1500° F. That is generally
the “target” that smiths shoot for. As long as you use it as your mark you will
get the desired results. For plain carbon steels a good way to verify that the
transformation is complete is to use a magnet. Austenite is not magnetic so
when your blade no longer sticks to a magnet you know it has transformed
from ferrite to austenite.
83

84
Annealing and Normalizing
We looked at these two terms earlier. Now it’s time to talk about what happens
when we heat treat our blade. Heat treating consists of several procedures done
in order: annealing, normalizing, hardening and tempering. Each procedure has
its own important function. Remember that when we were forging we had to be
the “boss” of the steel and make it go where we wanted it to go by sheer force.
In heat treating we are still going to be the boss, but this time we are going to
control those crystals (grains) by using heat alone. The first thing we are going
to do is make sure those grains are all the same uniform size and that they are
all kept small. How? By heating them up, but not beyond critical heat. Then we
let them cool slowly. This happens when we anneal and normalize. These two
processes give us what we want, small and uniform grains.
When forging, we are using temperatures just under 2,000 degrees. Forging
pounds and pushes steel grains every which way at that heat. The forging
process puts a significant amount of stress into the knife blade as a whole but it
also allows the grains to grow. Big grains are bad!
Grain growth is completely temperature dependent. The hotter you go, the
bigger the grains get and the faster they grow until they liquefy. Grain size
is manipulated only through heat treatment (time and temperature). Grain
refinement can however be effected through force. That is usually accomplished
in the modern steel mill through the rolling process, with both hot and cold steel.
The predominant method used to normalize today by all smiths, grinders and
forgers alike is to reduce the grain size by heat alone. The knife is heated back
up so that the ferrite reforms into austenite and then is left to slowly cool. High
heat is what we had when we were forging, but note that forging temperatures
(around 1,800°F) are much higher than those we use for the current processes of
annealing, normalizing and tempering. As long as we keep the temperature just
a little bit above or below the critical temperature of 1500°F and don’t hold the
knife at those temperatures for more than a few minutes the grains will not get
so large as to be a problem.
At this stage we want to cool the knife fairly slowly using the lock-in-the-vise
technique. Remember that this heating and cooling cycle is called normalizing. It
allows the larger grains remaining from the forging process to be refined without
adding new stresses. It also relieves the stresses that remain from forging while
the blade is within the straight containment of the vise. Normalizing can be
done more than once but generally there is no benefit to doing it more than three
times.
Hardening and Quenching
The next step in our heat treatment sequence will be hardening by quenching.
We will heat the blade to critical heat (1500°F) and then quench it quickly in oil.
This is where our billiard ball example becomes important again.

Above the critical temperature the carbon atoms are in those big gaps (the lattices)
between the billiard balls (the iron atoms). When we cool the knife rapidly in oil
the carbon atoms in the lattice don’t have enough time to get out and they get
trapped in those spaces between the iron atoms.
The image to conjure is that of the carbon atoms present in the austenite phase,
wanting to diffuse out of solution as the steel cools and form cementite; but
because of the rapidity of quenching they do not have time for this departure.
The microstructure pattern is arrested, “frozen”, due to the rapid heat reduction
when quenched. This suddenness forces the carbon permanently into those small
interstices between the ferrite structure which results in a massive dislocation
and distortion of the entire micro-crystalline structure within the steel.
The quenching and atomic distortion prevents the carbon from escaping outside
the austenite phase to reform into cementite. The carbon is trapped within the
ferrite structure. The new carbon-rich crystalized substance becomes fixed-intime-and-place
and the resulting internal structure is a brittle and super inelastic
form of steel called martensite. The martensite will remain at this maximum
hardness and nearly unusable brittle form forever if not tempered
Now, because the carbon atoms are in that space, the iron atoms cannot get back
into their previous strong, stacked billiard ball tower arrangement and so they
get forced into a new arrangement. This one is a bit harder to visualize. I imagine
the structure of martensite to be irregular—jagged, spikey, carbon particles
distorting the neatly stacked billiard balls. Since the iron atoms really want to get
back to the ferrite arrangement but can’t because the distorted carbon is in the
way, the result is an enormous increase in hardness and strength within the steel.
This is quenched martensite which is not only extremely hard, but very brittle.
Tempering
Tempering is the next procedure we perform. Its purpose is to “soften” the
martensite through heating. Then we perform an oil quench to arrest the softening
process. The tempering of the martensite steel is done at temperatures well below
the critical temperature, around 425 - 450°F. By doing this we provide sufficient
heat energy for some of the carbon to escape the lattices. As this happens the iron
atoms are able to get a tiny bit closer to that ferrite arrangement but not all the
way there. The closer they can get to that “in-between balance” the tougher the
steel will become. This is tempering.
Tempering reduces those inelastic internal stresses through its slower and lesser
degree of heat application. The second heating for tempering is followed by its
own second oil, or water, quenching to arrest the “softening” process. Greater
toughness in the steel is achieved by decreasing its hardness through tempering.
We give up a little hardness for a lot of toughness when we temper.
In other words, tempering slightly alters the size of, and redistributes the carbon,
in the microstructure of the martensite. This reduces/relaxes the internal bonds
85

Cross-bill tongs put pressure along the length of the blade that is wanting to
bend. Mr. Newton’s law again. The CBTs give gentle but firm support to the
blade in its time of need. Once the quench happens the blade supports itself and
will stay straight forever.
Because cross-bill tongs are hard to find you can substitute flat-jaw vise grips,
tin-working pliers or welder’s bending pliers to do almost the same job on hot
knife steel as the cross-bill tongs.
The cross-bill tongs
94
Testing for Hardness
Here is the way to test your edge. Use the small triangular or flat file in your
kit—the one used to test steel types. Softly, lightly and gently, and at a low angle,
pass your file across your blade’s edge. You will hear the unmistakable sound of
dense, rock-hard martensite crystals. There is no other sound like it. The brittle
and tight grain structure resists the file. The knife edge is even harder than the
triangular test file.
It’s as if you were filing flint or glass (file some flint or glass to see how it feels).
The tiny teeth of the file should not bite but glide over the surface of that edge.
Now pass your file down the handle’s far back edge; it should bite. It will bite, I
guarantee. The far back handle has not been hardened and does not need to be.
There is still enough spring in that unhardened handle steel to oppose almost
any abuse it would ever experience. The handle at the ricasso can be tempered
blue for flexibility after a full hardening quench, if desired.
Online, and on TV programs, we see smiths with a newly hardened blade, fresh
out of the oil, in one hand, and in the other a big ugly large-tooth file. They take
that file and rake it across the cutting edge to test for hardness. They announce,
“Now there’s a hard blade”. There is little chance they will do damage to the
blade’s edge because their edge is so thick. Don’t test this way with our knife.
The smith can also see the hardness after quenching. A hardened blade will
“pop off” thin scale at the edge, and sometimes other areas as well. The smith
can see a clean, deep dull gray surface along the cutting edge which indicates
the unmistakable presence of martensite. “Now there’s a hard blade”. Proceed
to tempering as soon as possible to relieve stresses from the hardening quench
within the blade.

TIP: Become more knowledgeable by hardening and tempering some test pieces
of steel and practice filing, bending or breaking them to observe their limits,
thereby becoming proficient at this steel testing and knowledge business.
IV) TEMPERING THE BLADE
We are now going to temper, not in a modern oven designed for tempering and
turned to a set temperature but by using color as our guide as it travels across
the heated surface of the blade. To prepare the blade for tempering only one
side needs to be polished—not shiny, just bright. I usually polish-up the left
side because that’s the side I’ll heat for color. Apply heat with the edge up. This
is because heat will travel up from the thick spine to the thin edge evenly. It’s
also the side where I place my touchmark. Old smiths used a soft red brick to
“brighten” the steel. We will use progressively finer grits of wet-n-dry sandpaper.
Stop at 400 grit. All we need to do is see the color as it passes along the blade, and
it can pass very fast. Control the speed of the temper color band with slow heat.
Control the Speed of the Temper Color Band
with Slow Heat
Before tempering your blade be very careful when handling it. Your hardened
blade has a good chance of cracking, chipping or breaking if dropped on a cement
floor or even when lying on the bench (those internal forces will sometimes pop
those hard martensite crystals apart). Sometimes this damage can’t be seen or
heard until later when it cracks or breaks, so be careful. Sharp cutting edges can
literally crumble when meeting a hard surface, it is that brittle! Pay attention.
Tempering reduces the hardness of the steel while maintaining a homogenous
grain structure. A blacksmith uses temper colors (the color band) to determine the
right moment to arrest this ‘softening’ process and “freeze” that molecular grain
transformation. The colors are the result of an oxidation of the surface of the steel as
the various temperatures travel along and through the blade. It has the appearance
of a rainbow. They will soon be sanded, polished or worn away because they are
so thin. They are like your children, enjoy them while they are still around.
In the Middle Ages the blacksmith was a most, if not “the most”, important
guy in the village. His use of temper colors down at the blacksmith shop was
considered magical by everyone including other craftsmen, peasants, Kings and
clergy alike. I consider temper colors magical myself. They are something akin to
the Aurora Borealis, childbirth, phase transformation in steel, grandchildren and
magnetism. All gifts from the Great Spirit to all her smiths everywhere pounding
at the anvil. Thank you.
I will not tackle the entire temper color spectrum here nor explain what temper
color is best for the wide array of whatever tool is being tempered: ax, chisel,
scalpel, watch spring or hammer. There is plenty of available information online
95

and in other books that will teach temper color and hardening/tempering in
general. I will, however, address the tempering of our work knife.
NOTE: Temper colors form due to the oxidation of surface atoms coming into
contact with the surrounding oxygen in the air. The thickness of this oxide is
determined by the degree of heat traveling across the surface. That thickness, in
turn, determines the colors that are reflected.
A factory-made, mass-produced knife blade and tang usually have the same
color and temper (temperature/hardness). They are not differentially tempered
as we can do, one blade at a time, in a one-man or one-woman forge. A factorymade
knife is hardened and tempered in a batch of hundreds, maybe thousands,
of other blades. This is done in a big oven or as they pass down a production line.
Either way the entire piece is produced at a single temperature and temper—
blade, edge, tang, everything.
The blade is sanded with 400 grit paper to shine
the surface so the colors may be seen. Note that
we have about 10% “carbon scoring” (oxidation) on
the surface. That’s a good thing.
Here the blade is in the angle-iron reflecting “oven”.
The iron absorbs the heat and reflects it back to
the other side of the blade, providing an ovenlike
environment. The multiple rivet holes are an
example of “trial-and-error”.
Here the author is heating the blade against the angle iron. A glove is sufficient protection for this lowheat
procedure.
96

The wheat color taken on by the blade is moving left toward, and then past, the ricasso. Once the color is
well into the handle the smith will quench the entire blade. The cooling rag has arrested the temper at
the tip, now a vermillion color, and along the cutting edge, wheat.
To differentially temper, in the old way, each hardened blade is heated, one at
a time, and brought to color by hand. The old-time smith placed a heat source
(e.g. a chunk of red-hot iron) on the bench or table of his anvil and the blade was
brought in close with tongs. He held the blade just the right distance from the
heated chunk to “draw color” and then quickly quenched in oil. What a visual! I
can still see my friend Evan teaching me this so many years ago.
I give in somewhat to modern utility and use a hand-held propane torch as my
heat source, and so should you. Polish the left side. Pre-heat your angle iron.
Hold the piece with your left hand, blade edge up (left side of the blade), and the
propane torch in your right hand. Slowly swing the torch flame from ricasso to
tip. Keep moving. Pause a couple seconds every-other-pass at the thick ricasso
as opposed to the thin point. The propane nozzle tip is about 10-inches from
the piece. Concentrate the center heat of the flame at the spine and cheek of the
knife. Keep the flame away from the blade’s thin edge area and more on that
thick cheek and spine. That thin edge will heat up quickly and come to color,
sometimes too soon. If you “miss” your color as it passes through…start over
with another hardening!
A flame held directly on the blade’s edge will heat the thin steel too rapidly and
take it beyond the correct temper color. Take your time. The entire heat may take
up to ten minutes. We don’t want the flame to draw color to the edge too quickly.
The process we seek is to “load” the thicker mass of steel in the spine with heat,
then allow it to naturally and gradually travel from that thicker spine to the
thinner bevel and eventually the cutting edge. By heating just the spine and
keeping the direct heat away from the thinner parts the color will travel much
slower and thereby give you greater control of the color’s speed. Once straw
color is observed in the spine you can “tease” the straw/wheat color from the
spine into the bevel/belly and finally to the edge, with quick feathering wrist
movements of the propane flame.
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102
CHAPTER VII
Polishing
Before we sharpen the cutting edge we will polish the blade’s surface. The blade
could be polished later but it’s so much easier not having an attached handle
to get in the way. It’s also true that sharpening an unhandled blade is much easier.
By polishing and sharpening now the smith can work up to and a bit beyond
the handle-blade line, making a clean look at the ricasso. That is not to say there
is anything wrong with some final polishing or sharpening after your blade is
handled. Progressive wet-n-dry (W/D), metal grade, sandpaper grits (120-220-320-
400-800) on a flat surface or against a rag (to polish) on a flat surface (to sharpen) is
another Blacksmith Secret of the past. This hand polishing process can replace the
buffing wheel and all those various colored rouges used to machine polish.
NOTE: Rouges are solid waxy-like bars about the size of a big sausage, sometimes
round and sometimes square. They are impregnated with various sizes of abrasive
material with their different colors indicating the grit number; red is fine, white is
super fine etc. That grit is then transferred to the buffing wheel by holding the bar
against the wheel while running it. The grit is then deposited into and on the cotton
wheel. Then the buffing wheel, with the grit, polishes the blade to a mirror-like
finish. Let me note that Gus had no such machine and neither do I.
SAFETY NOTE: The buffing wheel is the most dangerous tool a smith could have
in his or her shop. No other machine can “grab” your blade, fling it and stick it in
the wall on the other side of your shop. If you use one, be careful! Hand-polishing
is safer, leaves a finish that is in line with a Frontier blade, and reflects your new
blacksmithing skills.
Experiment first with rubbing your blade, but not the cutting edge, several times
on 220 grit sandpaper placed on a flat hard surface like a flat piece of wood,
work bench or chunk of granite. Have a can of water at hand with a couple
drops of soap in it to keep the sandpaper from clogging up and to float away
the bits of steel from the work area. Much the same job that kitchen soap does
for dinner dishes. Look at the blade to see what happens. Next place a rag (as a
cushion) on the same surface, then the sandpaper, and then the blade. Rub the
blade vigorously. See what happens. Polish progressively through the four grits.
Polish the entire blade to your liking. You can also use self-prepared sanding
sticks of the same grits. Use your thumb with various grits to reduce oxidized
buildup in hammered recesses if you wish.
NOTE: Sandpaper or man-made sanding surfaces were used long before commercial
sandpaper was available. Early forms recorded were actual hunks of sandstone or
shark skin, horsetail plant, sand imbedded animal skin, or crushed seashells rolled
in primitive mortar and then dried into flat or round shapes.

Here we see a gathering of sharpening, polishing
and stropping materials. A slab of granite, several
grits of sandpaper sheets with their corresponding
sharpening sticks, a leather, a 1500 grit strop (at
the bottom), and an old leather belt for your strop
material or to use as test material for sharpness.
Here we see the knife on the sandpaper and the
sandpaper against a rag. The can of soapy water is
nearby to float the swarf away from the sandpaper.
This is old-time polishing.
Remember, this is a hand-made blade and imperfections are desirable so not all
of them need to be polished away.
When polishing, lots of pressure can be brought to bear on the blade. The edge is
no longer fragile, ready to crumble. Just the opposite; it is at an optimal balance
between hardness and toughness. Pressure can be placed here. Pay attention
though. This edge, though not at its final sharpness, will easily cut you, bad. Be
careful!
Sharpening
Sharpened carbon steel edges are not indestructible, and they will need periodic
restoration. All knife edges will dull, no matter what kind of steel or hardness.
The secret to maintaining a knife’s edge is frequent and quick edge restoration.
Edges are sharp because they are thin. Edges, no matter how tough, will roll,
break and crumble even under normal use. This is because sharp and thin means
fewer atoms at the edge and more vulnerability to damage. That’s why we seek
the balance between toughness and hardness. That’s why we want that tempered
martensite edge. A properly tempered, carbon steel blade edge has been and
remains the sharpest and most restorable knife edge on the planet (except for
obsidian).
We will sharpen our Frontier blade at a 20-25° angle. The angle of a handsharpened
blade along its length will always vary from tip to choil because it’s
hand sharpened. Therefore, we want a balance between 20° and 25°; aim for
22.5°.
Most people can visualize two intersecting lines forming a 90° angle and most can
imagine a 45° angle line bisecting the 90° yet most have trouble with the 22.5° line.
103

Back to Sharpening
If you filed and sanded properly during the construction phase your blade’s
edge should be uniform and near final sharpness. All you need to do now is even
the sides, thus setting the final angle, sharpen, hone and strop. Taking it to this
next level of sharpness is a matter of time and elbow grease.
NOTE: Teaching someone how to sharpen a knife is like teaching a little leaguer
how to bat a ball. You can teach the basics but the batter will develop their own
subtle nuances to the mission. I usually precede all my instructions to my baseball
youths, my fledging smiths, and my own children with, “Do it my way first and then
improve on it”.
There are two basic sharpening methods. The first is with the angle iron jig. The
second is called the “at the bench method” or sometimes the “hand sharpening
method”. The angle iron jig is basically the same process as taught in the
pre-sharpening section in Chapter V. It’s demonstrated again with the two
photographs below.
The finished and handled knife blade locked into
the angle iron jig with vise grips. The sanding stick
is working perpendicular to the blade’s edge at the
prescribed 22.5° angle. Note the cutting edge is a
little better than 1/8-inch wide. This knife was made
from a farrier’s rasp. Note the “scale” effect on the
surface because of that.
This is the same knife viewed from the opposite
direction. Once again notice the width and
consistency of the sharpened edge and that
important angle of 22.5°.
Start bench sharpening with your lowest grit sandpaper; mine is 120 grit. Tear
the sheet in half. Sit down at a comfortable height with your work at the edge of
a solid table or workbench. Dip your half sandpaper sheet in soapy water and
lay it on your flat granite surface that rises above the table top. Physically set and
mentally mark the straight edge of the granite to your right. Start by holding the
handle in your right hand with the blade pointed and angled away from you at
106

about a 45°angle while the fingertips of your left hand rest at and control the tip.
Sometimes it will be just one finger providing downward pressure sometimes
two or more, sometimes none.
Starting with the blade tip touching near the right edge and bottom of the
block (remember that you can’t see the block, it’s under the sandpaper but I
will reference it that way) with your right hand dipping low to maintain the
22.5° angle, push the entire length of the edge away from you up and across the
sandpaper. The smith maintains that angle along the cutting edge from the tip
to the choil. It’s a double motion. Pushing uphill and away from yourself while
the entire edge comes into contact with the sandpaper at some point. It sounds
awkward, and it is, at first. Do this for two or three strokes then flip the blade, set
the blade angle at the same 45° pointing away, and the same 22.5° edge angle at
the choil at the top of the stone, and pull back toward yourself ending with the
tip at the bottom right of your block. Do this also for two or three strokes. This
balanced, symmetrical, up-then-back, opposite direction action will produce an
equally sharpened edge on both sides of the knife. Dissimilar, unequal strokes
make an edge unbalanced, lopsided and not nearly as sharp as it could be.
NOTE: Many smiths have a sharpening visual of a one handed back and forth
sliding and flipping motion to sharpen a knife (I think TV again). Even though it
looks cool, maintaining the proper angles on both edges as you slide and flip, it is
almost impossible. This motion is exactly what we do when stropping but not when
sharpening. When that stropping motion is used to sharpen it rakes your thin edge
across the stone or sandpaper at the wrong angle and will actually dull your blade
as it comes into contact with the sharpening surface.
The sandpaper is placed on the granite block and
the block on the bench. This motion is a pull, toward
the smith, starting from the choil and terminating at
the tip. Note the scratches following the pull. These
are shown here to demonstrate the tracking but they
would be washed away if the smith was using water.
This is the same knife viewed from the opposite
direction. Once again notice the width and
consistency of the sharpened edge and that
important angle of 22.5°.
107

Chapter VIII
Handle Attachment
The process of attaching the scales (handles) and an introduction to the Tube,
Rod and Peen (TRP) system was begun when I addressed drilling the handle
holes just after the annealing section in Chapter V. That is where we’ll pick up
the process. Handle material is as varied as the knifemaker. In my shop, I teach
students to start simple and go to complex or to use expensive materials only
after some experience first with simple and cheap stuff. Wood, usually oak or
walnut, was used traditionally. It’s inexpensive, attractive, and it works well.
It’s been used for thousands of years. Look at some old butcher knives with
oak or walnut handles. Most are still as solid as when they were made. I saw
some swords at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland that had full-tang, wood-riveted
handles. They were as solid as when William Wallace was about. Freedom!
When all my students are using the same material it’s easier for me to teach the
entire group to do the same thing because they usually have the same woodhandle
issues. I have them use wood their first outing as you also should. Check
out the knife supply people, and you’ll literally find hundreds of handle materials.
Some beginners crack, split or over file, or sand their scales before their knife is
complete. Expensive scales are, well…. expensive — use wood.
Start either by buying or milling your own scales from dry, clean, parent stock.
Make, or purchase, an extra set just in case. I will teach you the TRP method
to peen your scales successfully almost every time with no or little chance of
cracking the wood. TRP is another of those Blacksmith Secrets that has been
known by too few, until now. Once experience is gained with TRP the smith can
rivet without tubes much easier.
Another way to increase the odds of a successful handle attachment in your favor
is to use tougher material like polymers, horn, micarta, antler or bone. These
work well but harder materials have their own drawbacks. Sometimes they
crack, they might be hard to hand finish or they are not natural looking. Like so
many things in this world, it’s a trade-off. You can also use wooden scales that
have been stabilized (usually a polymer infused in a vacuum and then heated).
They are tougher than their original material, they work and finish about the
same as wood, and they are more split resistant. Do some fancy scales on your
next knife build. Do it the old-time, inexpensive wood way first.
TIP: When attaching rivets in hard material like micarta, bone, or horn, form a tiny,
and I mean tiny, countersink on each outside scale hole at the three openings. Tiny
is less than 1/32-inch. This is for the rod and tube to expand just a tiny bit and lock
the scale in place. We don’t do this on wood because the edge force at the very top
of the peen is extremely high and spreads out that same tiny distance naturally.
112

NOTE: The major reason students crack scales, even with my TRP method, is hammer
control. They just hit the peen too darn hard and too long. Be careful.
The Tube, Rod and Peen System
A way to peen your handle and almost ensure success is with the TRP method.
It’s a little more time consuming but in the long run worth every extra minute.
The TRP method was taught to me by Gus after I experienced many failed peens
in the early days. He never told me how he came up with it, but I’m glad he did.
TRP can be used with brass, nickel silver, or copper pins. I have even used 10d
nails and 11-gauge copper grounding wire as peening material.
When a pin/rivet/rod (interchangeable terms) is peened there are immense pressures
in and along the pin. When peening there is a mushroom-like spreading of the
rod material that is just above and below the handle. The more the mushroom’s
top broadens, the shorter the pin becomes, and the greater the pressure pushing
the handle material together. That is exactly what we want. The expanding
mushroom on both the top and bottom
shortens the rivet. The stationary rivet
within the handle stores tremendous
collective energy from the numerous
hammer taps. The resulting pressures
generated can be difficult to control and
maintain during construction. If the
slightest wobble occurs in the pin, trouble
will happen and will unevenly expand or
bend the pin. Historically the trick has
been to apply the maximum amount of
pressure against the scales by peening
without damaging the handle material
or deforming (i.e. bending) the rivets.
Without the TRP method this procedure
is hard to control at best.
The secret of TRP is that all the collective pressure is contained within the 5/32-inch
metal jacket (TUBE) around each 1/8-inch rivet. This keeps the pressure “captured”
and the rod, straight and true in the 5/32-inch hole. As a new knifemaker you may
sometimes manage to bend the rivets, but it is much harder to irregularly bend
the rod ends with TRP. The rods tolerate much more pressure than just a rivet
without a tube.
TIP: The 5/32-inch brass tubes and one 1/8-inch brass or copper rods for your knife
projects can be found at some hardware stores and always in knife supply houses.
They can often get the rods in copper if you ask them to special order. Also, wood
boat building dealers and roofing supply sources carry 1/8-inch copper nails that
work just fine. Cut the heads and points off and you will have a ready-made rivet.
113

The drawing on page 113 shows the tube and rivet inside a knife handle. Note
the jacket/tube around the pin and that the spreading out of the mushroom goes
a tiny bit down the pin hole spreading out the pin/rivet just below the surface.
The mushroom can be filed and sanded level with the handle material or allowed
to remain proud. All that is seen on the surface is six copper circles a bit wider
than 1/8-inch. Just like we want.
NOTE: Most modern bladesmiths use some combination of peened or un-peened
brass pins and epoxy. Epoxy and pins do an outstanding job of handle connection. If
old-time smiths had had epoxy, they would have adapted it to their tool inventory
just like they did electric lights, power hammers, oxygen/acetylene and overalls.
Preparing the Scales
Scales are 7/8-inch wide x 3/8-inch thick x 4-½-inches long. They should be wider
than the steel handle by about 1/8-inch.
Start by sawing the scales so they are 1/8-inch larger than needed on the sides
and the end of the handle. This is to guarantee a tight fit after final filing and
sanding. Fit both sides several times to ensure a tight-and-right fit. Mark “right”
and “left” on the inside of the scales.
114
Traditional Handle Riveting
TIP: See the author peening a knife handle on YouTube. Search for: Paul White
FORGED: Traditional Knife Peening.
Historically, handles were riveted. The old-timers didn’t have epoxy. They had
glue, but it was inferior by today’s standards. The trick then and now was to get
the three parts of the handle lined up, held tight and then drill the holes while
the parts remained tightly secured. Sometimes it’s like juggling squirrels, even
nowadays. If the parts don’t stay put everything gets catawampus and out-ofline.
Back in the day they used four systems: nuts and bolts, ring tongs, pine tar glue
and “C” clamps. I have used all four over the years.

The glue used in olden times was pine tar resin. I will address the pine tar
method only. The pine tar “glue”
wasn’t expected to bond the parts
together like a frontier epoxy but just
to hold them firmly until they could
be drilled, pinned and peened. Today,
the smith can use pine tar. I have a
few times. It’s messy and stinky, and
sticky on my hands for hours later. Did
I mention messy?
For this first knife, and to ensure your success, we will use contact cement.
Contact cement is a staple in the leather business. Another concession to the 21st
century. Follow the directions on the bottle. Pretend the contact cement is pine
tar, I do.
Glue-Up
Do the right scale first. Fit two or three times to make sure all is well. Put contact
cement on the inside of the right scale and the right side of the handle. Wait 15
minutes. Line up and press the two parts (handle & scale) together, hard. Place
in vise or vise grips and lock tight for a few seconds. You are now ready for
drilling the right scale.
Drill Press
Drill three 5/32-inch holes at your drill press through the holes already in the steel
handle and on through into the scale. Keep everything true and square to the
world.
Glue and Drill
Attach the left scale as you did the right. This time drill through the right scale
past the handle and through the left scale. There you have it, straight and true 5/32-
inch holes going through everything. Clean all three holes out with a handheld
5/32-inch drill bit. Be careful not to widen the holes or to cause misshaping to the
edges.
Cut the Tubes
The tubes will run the distance from scale edge to scale edge. The tubes are set
in the handle before the rods are inserted. That distance will be 7/8-inch (unless
you used 3/16-inch bar stock then it will be 1-1/8-inch). Cut your brass tubes 1-inch.
The extra 1/8-inch on each side will stick out beyond the scales and can be filed off,
thus ensuring a flat tube exactly at the surface. Cut with a hack saw. Be careful
not to crush or deform the tube when locked in the vise. After cutting, lightly
sand the outside surface at the tube ends to clear any burrs.
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This is a collection of student knives and one ulu. Many of the smiths represented here are from the
Chicago area and others have sent their knives from far away to be in this collective picture. My thanks
to their generosity. They all have made a piece of history and a family heirloom that will serve for many
generations. Congratulations and enjoy. May the FORGE be with you all.
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The Blacksmith
Paul White has been a blacksmith for over forty years. The smith who taught
Paul to make his frontier style blade was Gus Marie of Brownsville, Illinois.
Gus simply called his blade a work knife and so does Paul. The knife industry
romanticizes this blade style by calling it a “Frontier” or “Bush Knife”. Gus was
the last of an unbroken chain of blacksmiths, originally from France, who came
to the Colonies before the American Revolution.
Paul’s other early mentors were Evan Cooper, an original cowboy from Utah that
shod his own horses, made his own knives and branding irons, and repaired his
own wagons; a real “throwback” kind of guy. The Deal brothers, Jim and Ben,
both blacksmiths of Murphysboro Illinois, trained as rural smiths at Tuskegee
College after the first Great War. They allowed Paul to “hang around their shop”
helping out. Paul was also proud to have worked with Daryl Meier and Brent
Kington of Southern Illinois University. Both men ushered in this modern era
of blacksmithing and pattern-welded steel that we all enjoy. They too were an
early and significant influence on Paul’s traditional training and approach to
blacksmithing. Paul has treasured his friendships with these “old” smiths as
much as the lessons they taught. Relocating to Northern Illinois in 1978 Paul
was instrumental in establishing, equipping, teaching and demonstrating at the
smith shop at Midway Village Museum in Rockford, Illinois. For many years he
taught classes in general blacksmithing, Colonial hardware and, of course, knife
making. He now limits his teaching to individual smiths seeking that traditional
approach to blacksmithing passed-on to him from those legendary smiths of the
last century. He has learned what works and what doesn’t in teaching others to
build a knife. He has captured those old-time secrets in this book and wants to
see other smiths enjoy traditional blacksmithing as much as he does. Paul is an
old-time guy, teaching an old-time skill to make an old-time tool.
Any traditional craftsman will quickly tell you that the best way not to form bad
habits is to learn new skill sets from an expert. Paul’s methods will get you off to
an excellent start in learning the ancient craft of blacksmithing and the artistry of
knife-making. The skills gleaned from making the Frontier can then be utilized
in making any style blade in the knife inventory.
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