Second forged knife 1st stone handle.....plus process pics.

[AndradeArtWorks]

Greetings All,
Well this one was way more work than I had anticipated. Tons of fun, a bit of frustration, and lots learned about how I would do it next time.
As for the stone handle......well, I did not have any nice wood, and I did have plenty of stone...so that is how that decision was made.
I wanted to try an enclosed tang knife, then it turned to a full through-tang due to the stone handle.
Here are the images of my process, that at many times felt really raggamuffin with the limited tooling I have. Mostly all hand work..........and then there are the visitors to the studio, with unsolicited advise like, "that would be easier with a mill, or a lathe" and others like that. I just say, "yeah, easier, but not as much fun!".
Doing this work from scratch and by hand is challenging, but also rewarding. There is still lots for me to learn, and techniques to refine; which is what makes this all so much fun.

This one is 11&1/8" OAL, and the blade is, to the front edge of the integral-bolster 5&3/8" forged 5160 3/4" round bar. The handle is an extruded serpentine lava called peridotite, and the fixtures are laminated forging-bronze and coin silver.
Here we go with some images of the process, I hope you enjoy them.

Don Carlos


I forged some bolster out of special forging-bronze that did not work out that well, but it was great trying this, and I think that for other types of guards/bolsters it will be fun to work on more of this. Below is the 'jig' I made to forge the first bolsters over.



The forged bolster got too thin at the edges, and were not feeling like they would work out, so I laminated a silver eagle to some of the bronze and proceeded from there.



Below are the bolsters just about ready to fit with the handle and all. You can see the tang at the top of the image ready for silver-soldering.



And the finished knife. I was thinking of texturing the bolsters, but decided to polish them. I think once the knife gets some use, the fixtures and blade will patina very nicely.