Blade Smithing

Given that this website is of my hobbies and personal exploits, I'd be remiss to exclude blade smithing one of my central hobbies. Through this hobby, I have made many knives and a spear, a few of which are mentioned here. This does not include plans for future blades I want to make. Keep in mind that I am still very much in my learning curve and these knives are far from perfect.

This is the latest knife I've made with a nice mirror finish. I call it my "Baby Bowie" since this knife is on the lowest spectrum, size-wise, of what classifies as a Bowie knife. This knife type was held by an American pioneer named James Bowie, the knife's name sake, which he used in numerous cases for self defense and in brawls. The pioneer himself was made famous by the last stand at the Alamo, which consequently propelled the knife to fame as well. It was originally a very large and heavy knife being 12" long, 5" wide and 0.25" thick. This knife was about half that at 6" long, 3" wide, and 0.2" thick. The reason I did this was mostly practical since there simply was not enough metal left after grinding so scaled down. Aside from the necessary miniaturization I have no complaints on the blade, however I am not very happy about a few things on the handle.

This is by far the best knife I've made yet, both in execution and complexity. The knife itself is a Seax, a traditional Norse knife used frequently by the Vikings. Due to this history I gave it a Norse theme. On the blade I etched Anglo Saxon runes. The first side says "Virtue in" and on the back side, "Sacrifice" I decided to etch this after a lot of research into Norse beliefs. One of the best displays of virtue and bravery is sacrifice, that is giving of yourself for the greater good. The examples of stories of sacrifice in Norse culture are plentiful and are often told to communicated what is admirable and good. Examples of sacrifice legends in Norse mythology include: Odin giving his eye for the Wisdom and the ability to rule, Tyr giving his hand up in the successful effort to lock up Fenrir so that the wolf could never threaten Asgard or Earth again, etc. These are two of many legends that illustrate the importance of sacrifice to the Vikings, not to mention the example of the Norse afterlife (Valhalla and Folkvangar) which is based on the sacrifice of a warrior's life in combat. So the idea of sacrifice is deeply engrained in Viking culture as the ultimate and salvific display of virtue. This idea is also shared in the Catholic culture whose main display of the "Virtue in Sacrifice" is the Cross in which Jesus Christ sacrificed His life for the salvation of all souls. I decided to incorporate the fact that the idea is shared between the two religions in the handle. On one side I burned in an image of Yggdrasil, the Viking world tree and on the other a Cloisonné styled cross (a concept I heard of in my Art History class). I chose these two images because they are both the "trees of Salvation" by which the world is saved. I also chose them because they are both places of tremendous sacrifice for the greater good. I decided to add these references and comparisons to Catholicism because they've been made before by notable missionaries like Venerable Bede who used these similarities to convert many Anglo-Saxons to Catholicism. I did the blade etching by running an electric current through the blade with salt water on the parts I wanted etched. The parts that were supposed to stay unetched, I covered in tape (an insulator). This blade is far from perfect, the handle engraving and overall detail work is just barely satisfactory for one and the handle fit is not very tight. However overall I am satisfied with the work I've done, especially considering it's a first try in detail work.

This is a throwing knife I made of rebar. It is honestly a pretty good knife and throws well. It was an interesting knife to make especially because I had to keep aerodynamic principles in mind like Center of Mass to ensure it flew well, and it succeeded in that regard.

This one was too top heavy. When I started it I was focused on the blade and didn’t leave enough metal for the tang (where the handle is), so the blade is great, the tang and the balance
could’ve been better.

This one is mostly good though I do want to sand and narrow out the handle, but that summer ended and I ran out of time, so I haven’t gotten to it. There's also a tiny space between the handle and the guard, but it was one of my first ones and I learned a lot from its construction.

This one I like a lot, it just hurts to use because it’s like a cleaver-push dagger hybrid. The thing is the cleaver is not the most efficient thrusting knife which is what the push dagger needs to be, so when you use it like a push dagger, it pushes back into your hand. That’s a design flaw on my part.

For this last one I used another smith's equipment, he had a better grinder and forge. Additionally he used it as an opportunity to teach me how to grind so he showed me how it should be done with this knife. So while I did forge it, he did a good amount of the grinding.

This is a spear I finished in mid-June. It is 6 feet tall with a 6 inch spear head. This is by far my favorite blade but when I was testing it, I pushed it to the limit and the shaft snapped. I was actually surprised because it was a 1.5 inch diameter wood shaft and I was testing it with my bare hands.