The integral bolster knife is something really connected to the Brazilian knife culture, specialy to those of southern origin, where we grew up alog with the Gaucho culture.

The design of this kind of knife is very apealing and it can only be made by forging, and it is a true skill test for any bladesmith. With the recent internecionalization of Brazilian custom cutlery the integral bolster Gaucho knives have become extremely popular in the US and Europe and this is one of the reasons this tutorial was made.

This tutorial was made with pictures taken during the second SBC forging demo in 2003. The blade was forged by Rodrigo Sfreddo and Ricardo Vilar, and the tutorial was put toguether by Francisco Ferrari as educational pomoting of the Brazilian Bladesmiths Society.

All I have done was to translate the information and added some pictures I had previously taken to help illustrate the article, as well as to develop a little further some of the explanation. I hope you all enjoy this article as much as we did putting it together.

Jeff Velasco

First of all you need your tools and stock. We use 1" round stock for our knives, usualy 52100. Hammers, tongs and a spring fuller, and latter on some sort of grinder. This is a hidden tang handled knife. You can slightly modify the instructions here for a full tang handled knife. We will get into that latter on.

We start by heating the steel and marking the beggining of the blade with a spring fuller tool. Be sure you leave enough material in front of the marking in order to forge the blade.

The tools you will need

Using the spring fuller tool, mark the
beggining of the blade.

The marking is done.

Now we start to bring material down to forge the blade. Just be sure yu leave plenty of stuff to work with. If you forge it too thin you might get short on steel when finishing the blade shape.

To continue this tutorial click here.
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