Thread: Knife making!

And for kicks and grins, this is the other billet I started working on. Same materials and layer count (initially). What we did with this was stretch the billet out into a rectangle, then flipped it onto it's side to upset the grain pattern. Then we cut it into 8 pieces and forge welded it together. So if you're counting at this point it should be 88 layers, but it doesn't look it. Once that was squared up, we drove an axe down the center in an attempt to make a feather pattern. We kinda missed the mark, and there are some places where that last split is trying to come unwelded, but we did end up with a pretty interesting pattern. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing with this yet, but this is what it looks like cleaned up and acid etched to bring out the pattern:



We'll make sure those cracks are straightened out before continuing, but honestly that isn't that bad considering neither of us had ever even attempted a feather pattern before. I can also see why very few people try this type of nonsense by hand. That was 5 hours of forge work just to get it to this point, and it will be several more before anything resembling a blade can come out of it.