First chopper attempt

2024 March 31 ◦ 4 min ◦

First run of the home forge

Before starting work on my nice piece of knife steel, I wanted to test the end-to-end operation of my propane forge and other recently acquired blacksmithing tools. This was mainly dialing in the propane regulator/valve settings, but I also wanted to get a feel for the hammer, tongs, and anvil. I used a piece of rebar for this, and everything went smoothly.

Rebar heating in forge, and sitting on anvil in various stages of flattening — Test run of propane forge and anvil, using rebar

First attempt at forging a blade at home

Next I was ready to start my real project: making a (smallish) chopper...

Bar stock sitting on anvil next to hammer and tongs — 5160 bar stock, 0.262" x 2" x 12"

Roughly forged bar stock — Tip and tang starting to take shape.

Front and back of tang rounded inwards — Palm swell added to the handle.

Workpiece in hot forge — Heating the steel above critical temperature.

Heat-treated steel sitting on anvil — Result of the first heat treat attempt. Ended up with a slightly warped tang, but otherwise it seemed to go well.

Hot steel glowing orange — Normalizing the steel before attempting to fix the warp, then planning to heat treat again.

Rough edges (and tip) grinded off to create the desired blade profile.

Multiple views of the bent tang — There was a slight bend in the choil that I tried to straighten using various methods. None were successful so far, so I continued, hoping I can fix it later.

Knife-shaped piece of forged steel with both ends cut off — Both ends needed to be shortened to fit the blade in my quench tank (8") and tempering oven (13"). Quick work with a bandsaw.

Trimmed blade after initial grind — Grinding the trimmed blade to clean up the profile.

Halfway through grinding — Continued grinding to clean up the profile and faces, and this is when I noticed a possible crack above the choil.

Finished grinding for the day — Continued grinding to get a better view of the cracks, and see if they go below the surface.

Multiple views of what appear to be cracks in the choil area — Close-up view of what appear to be cracks in the choil area.

Results

Unfortunately I was not able to grind the cracks away, and some of them appear to go almost halfway through the thickness of the steel. This area of the knife, where the handle meets the blade, will be subject to the highest levels of stress, so these cracks seem likely to result in a critical failure.

I'm unsure whether it's possible to fix these cracks without welding, so I'm seeking input from experienced bladesmiths to determine if this is salvagable as a chopper. Worst case, I'll cut off the handle and then repurpose the blade section into a smaller complete knife.