M40 Basement Bladesmithing
M40 Basement Bladesmithing
Questions? Email: m4040@m4040.com
NICK'S CAMP KNIFE
Nick has been wanting to make a camp blade, and has been mulling designs for the past few weeks. We finally took up the project this past Sunday...
Camp knife concept as designed by Nick and drawn out in Sharpie on a 3/16 billet of 1095 high carbon steel…
M40 Rough grinding to shape…
The roughed out blade… still VERY rough!
After a LOT more (finer and finer) grinding, it’s time to drill for the handle
pins.
…and now she's ready for a spell in the forge...a 2500F blast furnace that
quickly takes the blade from room temperature to a bright, glowing red hot temp.
Once the blade reaches about 1800 degrees F, it has changed its crystalline
structure and formed carbides. Now we need to essentially freeze those carbides
in place by quickly cooling the blade. For this, we give it a dip in used motor
oil. This is called a "quench".
The quench leaves the blade VERY hard… too hard in fact.
More cleanup… some fine grinding and polishing… and she gets baked in the oven
at 350F for almost an hour. This is called "tempering". It makes the blade less
brittle and brings the blade down to a hardness better suited to a knife.
The temper process also tends to leave a golden-orange oxidation coat…
Time to think about handle slabs. Nick picked a VERY innocuous looking block of
Brazilian Cocobolo wood from my exotic hardwood bin. Cocobolo is one of the
densest woods in the world and one of only a few types of wood that sink in
water.
And once we sliced some slabs… HOLY CRAP… just look at the beautiful grain that
was waiting inside! Nick sure can pick ‘em!
The handles were pinned and peened in place with ¼” brass tube stock.
The blade was polished out to remove the
oxidation coat.
After lots of shaping, sanding and polishing to bring out the beautiful
woodgrain and blade luster… she’s shaping up to be a mighty beautiful
blade!
Started @ 1:30pm – Finished @ 5:30pm (4 hours total working time). Not bad for a
Sunday afternoon!
More to come!
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