One day while walking to the corner grocer, I found a chunk of leaf-spring on the side of the road. It must have fallen off of a passing car or truck. Being a knife-maker, I knew it would be 5160 steel and makes excellent knives.
I took it back to my forge, heated it up and started hammering on it. I didn’t have any particular shape in mind – I just wasn’t in the mood for serious work and wanted to have some fun. As I hammered away this whimsical form started to take shape, and I decided to just go with it. I’m not sure exactly what kind of knife it is – so let’s call it a cheese knife or veggie chopper.
Steel from car and truck leaf springs make excellent edge holding knives. When forged and heat treated properly the knives forged from this type of steel is tough, durable and stays sharp.
This handmade knife was a lot of fun to forge. I decided not to sand away all the hammer markings, and intentionally left some of them as a reminder of the story behind this knife.
Canadian troops storming Juno beach, Normandy, on D-Day
Here we go again, another lockdown! In the province where I live, Ontario, the government has just issued a new round of emergency stay-at-home orders. Among other things, indoor dining at restaurants is completely banned and indoor gatherings severely restricted. Covid infection rates are surging and hospitals are at the breaking point all across the country.
Of course, with every new surge in covid there is a new surge of public outcry over the restrictions. Last week in my city over one thousand people lined a major street to protest the new restrictions on their shopping experience. Nobody enjoys these lockdowns, but as we get through this pandemic I think it will help to try to get some perspective on this.
At Least We’re Not Being Asked to Storm Nazi Occupied Europe
I’ve been thinking a lot lately on what my grandparents went through. They lived through World War 1, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and then just to round things out, World War 2. Nana was a young woman of 16 when WW1 broke out, and by the time she was 47 she’d been through two world wars and the Great Depression, all while raising a family.
Her husband was an army instructor during WW2, and two of her sons, my uncles, were on the front lines with the Canadian Army in Europe. My mother was a child during the Depression, and retained vivid memories of it all through her life. Often at dinner they had nothing but a piece of bread soaked with milk, with some sugar sprinkled on it.
Dad Served in 3 Theatres of the War
My father-in-law served in the U.S. Army during WWII, and participated in the European, North African and Pacific theatres. He landed in North Africa first. When the African campaign ended, we was sent to Italy. He was on the front lines in Italy when the war ended in Europe, and instead of being sent home he was put on a troop transport ship and sent to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. Dad was still in the Pacific when Japan surrendered, and served as part of the American occupation army in Japan.
It’s No Joke
Two good friends of mine I’ve known for many years got covid a couple of months ago. I’ll call them Heather and Jim. Heather struggles with extreme fatigue and is in bed most of the time, but she’s got it better than Jim. At least she’s expected to live. Jim might not. He’s fighting for his life every day and at the time of this writing, we still don’t know if he will make it. Heather and Jim are not old, and the new variants even have kids and young people on ventilators.
Lockdown orders are not much fun, but we all need to pull together. It will save lives and ease the pressure on our overworked doctors, nurses and hospital support staff. The emergency stay-at-home orders aren’t so bad. We can do this. It’s not like we’re being asked to storm the beaches of Nazi occupied Europe.
2020 has been a year for learning new hobbies and skills as we find ways to stay sane during the pandemic. We are never too old or too young to try something new. My 8-year old grandson loves hammering on hot steel. This weekend he was down for American Thanksgiving and we had a lot of fun in the old forge.
And now, here is a slo-mo video. (I love how the hammer ringing on the anvil sounds in slo-mo!)
I happened to be cleaning my shop the other day and found this ugly old thing…
my first knife
It’s the first knife I ever made, forged from an old lawn mower blade. I don’t think it could have been any uglier if I’d planned it that way, but at the time I was pretty excited – not so much with the results but with successfully completing the forging process to make something.
My first forge was as crude as my first knife was ugly. For a forge I used a fire pit in the backyard, with a steel pipe stuck in it and a hairdryer taped to the other end for a makeshift blower. For those not familiar with the art, a simple fire alone will get hot enough to roast hotdogs, but not enough to heat steel so that it can be forged. Forging requires that you heat steel to the point that it will be soft enough that you can change its shape with a hammer. To get a fire that hot you have to blow air into it somehow. Blowing air is what turns a fire into a forge.
With my first ever ‘forge’ I heated my chunk of lawn mower blade to a bright yellow and hammered away. After a few hammer blows the steel cools off and will no longer be soft enough to manipulate its shape with a hammer. Back into the fire it goes, bringing it up to a bright yellow, and then returning it to the anvil for more hammer blows. For forge tongs I used a pair of old plyers and my anvil was a chunk of old ‘I’ beam I picked up for a couple of bucks at a garage sale.
This process went on for a while until I had the shape of a crude knife. I heat treated it, and finished the handle with some chunks of hardwood I found laying around the garage. For pins I used bits of metal from a clothes hanger.
Lawn mower blades are usually made from good tool steel, with enough carbon that it can be hardened to hold a sharp edge if properly heat treated. So while not very pretty, my knife is sharp and very serviceable – but I am not expecting to win any awards with it.
I still remember how exciting it was just to see hot steel move under my hammer blows and realizing I could manipulate and shape it. It was a lot of fun, even if my first few attempts turned out ugly.
I don’t think people should quit if their first attempt, or even first several attempts, don’t work out so well. Don’t be discourage by failure or ugly results. Fortunately, persistence pays off and if you keep at it, you will get better. Here is a picture of a knife I recently made, using the same process of forging. I forged this paring knife from the leaf spring of a car, and the handle material came from the wood of a honey locust tree in my backyard.
This year has been one for the history books, as the entire world has been in lockdown and millions of people around the planet are in some form of self-isolation.
Damascus steel blade with deer antler handle.
I haven’t seen friends or family in weeks. My wife and I don’t have any kids at home – they’ve all grown and left the nest. But three of them live only 10 minutes away across town (we have six all together) and we haven’t been able to visit them in weeks. Covid is no joke, and we are taking this seriously. So we are going to tough it out through the isolation until it is safe once again.
One of the ways I’ve been coping with the stress of self-isolation is to spend a lot of time hammering on hot steel. It is amazingly therapeutic, and you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a shrink over Zoom.
My wife expressed some concern that during these times of elevated stress, I’ve turned to making sharp objects for fun. But I told her not to worry…really… I’m reasonably certain I’m not going to snap…I think…
All kidding aside, knife making can be a fun and rewarding hobby. One of its positive points is that it has a very low cost entry point. You don’t have to spend much, if any, money to get started. It does not require specialized tools or expensive equipment unless you want to go pro. You can get by with basic tools – which is all you need to do this as a hobby. If you are even a moderately handy person you likely already have most of what you need in your shop. A low cost entry point means no harm done if you want to try it and then decide it’s not for you.
Someone gave me a rack of deer antlers they found in the woods a couple of weeks ago and I used it to make this knife. The blade is cable Damascus I forged a while back from a piece of steel cable. The bolster is brass and leather.
The best way to get through this pandemic is to take up a hobby. Don’t just sit around watching the news or obsessing on social media. Learn to make something with your hands. Take up cooking, baking bread, wood working, painting, pottery…anything you think you’ll enjoy that other people can enjoy as well. It will keep you sane.
