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Forged, normalized, annealed, wire-wheeled, and oiled. Ready for grinding. Man this was a piece of work. I learned a lot. Any little tweak affects another part of the knife. Think I'm there, though. First Bowie.

It's actually a lot easier with a heat treat oven. You can be super precise with your temps. There's a whole section on this forum on the heat treating of different steels. Now, the annealing gets a little more complicated depending on if you want to do lamellar or sphearoidal annealing. You...

Ok. That helps. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this is kind of the worst case scenario. Stock removal with a bend already in the metal is kind of a killer. Straightening a 4 foot piece of steel is a huge challenge, so I think you should probably focus on trying to straighten each individual...

If you are forging with it, I wouldn't worry too much about a bend in the piece of metal. You will have to straighten as you forge anyways. If you are doing stock removal, that is a different story. You can always grind your steel to get it straight, but you lose a lot of metal that way...

A few in the works this morning. This big one is the largest I've attempted. We'll see how it turns out. Trying to forge as close to shape as possible. For perspective, the blade on the big one is a little over 10 inches.

I really like it. The only other anvils I have used were in a couple of classes that I have had. I've had it for a couple of years now, and it's worked well for me.

I used 2x12 pressure treated lumber, with 4 threaded rods running through them to lock them together. I also added drop down casters to be able to easily move the anvil around when needed.

They are both integral to the back piece of leather. The loop folds over, and becomes a second layer of leather on the stack.

Thanks! That is a new sheath design for me. Have been wanting to try that style for a little while.

Just delivered this today. 1084 with stabilized redwood burl scales.

Working on a new sheath design. Kind of liking it. Added the lining on the lower picture. Still have to stitch it, finish the sides, and punch a hole for the retention strap.

For the basketweave, scribe a guide line down the center of your leather. I try to do it at the fold point so it doesn't show up as much. Then alternate on each side of the line to start with. Use the bottom line of the one you just punched to fit the top line into for the next one. Also...

Trying something, probably dumb. This kicked my butt last night. A before and after shot, by hand. Need to drift a hole, heat treat, and add a handle. Should be a little over 4 lbs.

One last thing with the surface plate. Coat your tang with blue dykem and scribe a center line with a height gauge on the surface plate. Use your ricasso as your reference. Do this on both sides of the tang. I gave up on grinding with a magnet. It's just too easy to roll one way or the...

I almost always have to finish with some hand sanding on a surface plate to finish it off. If you don't have a surface plate, it's a necessity.

I bought this and use it for a horizontal quench tank. Holds about 3 1/2 gallons of Parks 50. I would be concerned using less than that. It's a brand new 40mm ammo can for about $35. Thought it was a good deal at the time. Allows me to seal it up between uses...

So, a friend's son wanted to make a tomahawk out of a railroad spike for a high school project. I helped him make this. It was his first time doing any blacksmithing. He did well. I only made a few adjustments here and there to make sure he was going in the right direction. It was actually...

This one is 1075 with a radiused spine, and 416SS guard. Just got the pictures back from the photographer.

I have the same setup. I have gotten to the point where I will cut on the bandsaw using a guide line on the block, then flatten on the mill. You loose some thickness, but you have a flat surface to work with. I don't do many scales because I am mainly doing hidden tangs, but I'm trying my...

I do the same. I use 1/16" dowel pins and shape everything before glue up. I've made a mistake or two on some of them, and at least you can recover and start over on that part.