Damascus Hunter

Recently I bought a hydraulic press and produced a Damascus bar.

Although the press makes easier to produce the damascus, I coud not manage to create an uniform pattern. Thus, this first bar is an aleatory pattern with few rain drops. It is made of 1095 carbon steel (old files) and 15N20 and have near 200 layers. In order to produce the desired contrast between the layers, the knife was eached in Ferric Perchlorate and then Phosphatized. The overall shape follows the last hunters I made. The blade is approximatly 4 inches long and was silver soldered to the guard, made of the same damascus piece. The handle is Olive Wood hand sanded and treated with Tung oil.

The sheat was made of dyed leather and ornamented with some basic stamps.

Resuming the Activities

After several attempts, this is my new creation, a carbon steel hunter knife. The blade was forged from 5160 steel and received selective quenching. As a matter of fact, I changed the quenching fluid and it produced visible improvements on the quality of heat treatment.

I forged two twin blades, quenched and tempered both to produce identical properties. Then, one of them was bended 90º as shown in the picture.Just the hardened area near the edge presented a crack. The remaining blade received the proper finish and is presented here. The guard is made of 1/2" Stainless Steel piece and was soldered to the blade.

The handle is made of Imbuia Burl, and the shape follows the one I made during R. Sfreddo´s Knife Making Course. This is a very simple and elegant shape, though special care must be taken to keep edges and corners clear and well defined.

Knife from Sfreddo Bladesmithing School

Recently I spent 10 days taking lessons from Rodrigo Sfreddo, at his workshop and bladesmithing school, in Nova Petrópolis - RS(http://www.rodrigosfreddo.com/index.php?idioma=2). Sfreddo certainly is one of the best knifemakers in Brazil and his work has internetional relevance. During the course we developed a hunter knife taking special care to every step, from the forging process to fitting and finishing.

Besides all the tips he could give us, we took home a piece with quite high quality level to use as benchmark for future works. The knife has aprox. 11" long, the blade as forged from O1 steel, guard and pins are made of stainless steel and the handle is imbuia burl.

Stock Removal Skinning

This is an experience on stock removal. A small skinning knife (6 1/4 or ~16cm long), made from a 1/4" flat bar of 5160 steel. The bouster and the pommel are stainless steel (316). The handle is made from Buckeye Burl scales.

Sandero Style

This is a new hunter knife that I produced following this popular shape called Sandero. In fact It is mainly characterized by the handle shape, developed and named by the famous american knifemaker Jerry Fisk.
The wood is the same I´ve been using and I´m still having trouble to finish it and make it clear and glossy.
The blade was forged from a flat spring, the guard and pin are made of stainless steel. It has 9" overall length .

First damascus knife

These are some photos of my very first attempt to produce damascus steel blades. In fact, I´ve tryed it before but this is the first finished knife. It was began with 14 layers, 7 of 15N20 (rich nickel steel) and old files (1095, I gess). 15N20 produces the light stripes while the 1095 becomes dark after eaching. The billet was streched and folded 3 times (that was all my arms could handle) resulting in aproximatly 105 layer. After that I forged a full tang Integral knife and made some slots all over the blade area using a grinding disc to "enrich" the damascus pattern. By the end, I still got some delamination. They revealed during the forging process.

This is the original billet.

During the folding process, the photos were taken by a cel phone.

The result.

New hunter

This is a new hunter knife I’ve just finished. Forged from a flat spring, it is a small knife, 8"(~200mm) length overall. The guard, pins and pommel were made from stainless steel. The handle was made from Amarelinho (Helietta longifoliata Britt., Rutaceae). It is a light yellow colored wood but the use of a wrong polishing compound introduced these dark grains.