Niels Provos (Entries tagged as knife)

Pattern-Welded Kurzsax

nospam@example.com (Niels Provos) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 10:56:23 -0700

This knife is a multi-bar construction with W1 for the cutting edge and 1095 and 15n20 for the twisted rods. It is inspired by early Viking-age finds from Norway. The guard and pommel are made from brass and embossed with a triangle design. The handle is made from bok oak used in the defensive ring wall of the Viking-age Haithabu settlement in Northern Germany.

The knife was created as the result of an accident. While working on the rods for a Langsax, I twisted too hard and a piece of the rod sheared off. Fortunately, that piece was long enough to suffice for a Kurzsax. The blade is about 7.5in long and then handle measures 5.5in for a total of 13in. The knife features a scandi grind and is very sharp. There is no secondary bevel on the edge.

Railroad Spike Knife

nospam@example.com (Niels Provos) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:05:57 -0700

The is a knife made from a high carbon railroad spike. The blade is flat ground and about 4.5in long. The whole knife is a little bit longer than 10in. The twist in the handle feels nice in the hand. HC in this case apparently means 1030 which is pretty low carbon content for a knife. While it got to be very sharp, the edge is probably not going to stay that way for very long.

Forging this was a lot of fun and using the spring fuller really helped with separating the steel from the handle and the blade. Making this knife actually didn't take very long. About an hour of forging time, a couple hours of grinding and polishing.

San Mai Knife

nospam@example.com (Niels Provos) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:48:38 -0700

A while ago, I forged a San Mai billet with the hope to turn it into a tanto. Unfortunately, the forge I was using had a very oxygen rich atmosphere and the welds did not take very well. Over the last couple of days, I spent some time grinding and heat treating the remaining steel into a knife for practice purposes. The cable structure of the knife came out very nicely with repeated applications of lemon juice and metal polish to remove the oxides left by the lemon juice etch.

I also figured out how to take decent pictures of the steel. The trick was to use direct light rather than diffused light that shines directly on the blade, and then have black surfaces inside the light box. The angle of the knife needs to be so that the black is reflected do the camera. Although, this is a failed knife due to all the welding flaws, it still was an interesting experiment.

Hand forged Nessmuk knife

nospam@example.com (Niels Provos) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:31:25 -0700

I just finished a three day bladesmithing class with Grant Marcoux in Alameda. He taught me how to make a Nessmuk knife out of O1 tool steel. The blade is hand forged. It has been normalized, oil hardened and tempered. The edge is so strong and sharp that it can cut even steel. The handle is made out of Padauk with a brass guard. Grant taught me how to make the knife step-by-step starting with the O1 round and forging it into rough shape. The class was fun and I have learned to really appreciate how much work goes into making a good knife. Now, I just need to convince my wife that it is okay to set up a forge at home.