Hand forging a little dagger

Anymore me doing a little thing turns out to be a bigger job than I planned but since that is now the way things are I'll just go along with it.

The first photo is the preform I forged to shape the day before I started this project.


This photo was taken after I forged the bevel on 1/2 of the blade.


In this photo I forged the second bevel.


This photo was taken after I spent more time forging on both bevels. Most of the hammering was done with the cross peen on a 3 pound hammer and was later cleaned up with the flat face of a 16 ounce ball peen hammer.


The last photo is looking down on one of the beveled edges.

Looking good !

Here's a few more photo's. Godzilla got to earn his keep this time.

Okay Ray...you got my attention. I'm following this one!

little huh

I love seeing in process pictures like this. Your hammer work is so neat and clean, Raymond.

Looks awesome Ray,... "precision hand forging". I like it!

Here's an old photo I took in October of 09. At the time I was into making socketed spearheads. I wanted to show the many shapes the spearhead became while I was hand forging it. There was probably 10 to 20 minutes between each time I traced the work on the big sliding door of my shop. Forging the blade of the spearhead is exactly the same as forging a dagger.

If you look at 10 I had just forged the bevel on the one side. 11 I had forged the second bevel which had straightened the blade out.

Very good looking dagger

I finally got around to finishing off the little dagger. Instead of using wood for scales I used a couple pieces of 1/4" thick sole leather. Not sure if it was processed differently that the normal leather. Its stiff and quite hard. One of the reason I didn't want to go with wood was the handle area was not perfectly flat and I did not want to try and grind it. After I Barge cemented both the knife and the leather I put it in my vise to put pressure on it. It made a real tight seal and then I used some iron telegraph wire WG had given me to make rivets out of. Pretty pleased with how it turned out. Also added a few photo's of the sheath making precess I use. The finally pictures of the sheath was taken after I applied the leather dye. The knife was forged out of 1084. The blade is 4 1/2" and 9 1/2" overall. Guess it isn't all that small.

Sets the heart a-poundin' :drool: