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Forging a Blade |
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This short video clip (2 MB) shows a double edge bent knife being forged. Once you click start,
it will take about 45 seconds to load if you are on DSL (or several minutes on dial up). |
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Play Video |
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All of about 10 seconds to forge that blade? That's fast!
There is a bit more going on than is immediately obvious. You might need to let it play through a
few times to notice some things:
The reason the blade looks like it gets brighter/darker several times is that this video was taken over four
heats. It just doesn't show the blade being taken to and from the forge for each heat. So the blade didn't really
get forged in 10 seconds - more like about 10 minutes, and somewhere around a hundred hammer blows.
The bottom die is beveled the opposite of what you might expect. The ridge along the center is the high point.
That is why the blade is moving around so much. When it is over to the left, the closer edge of the blade is
being forged to a bevel. When the blade is over to the right, the edge of the blade on the far side (left) is
being forged.
Once the forging is done, one more heat is taken in the forge, and the blade is placed in ashes to let it slowly
cool and anneal, thus relieving a lot of the stresses from forging.
The rest is a real grind... |
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