How to Make Your Own EDC

So, I have this tutorial up in a few places...including Facebook, and YouTube, but I thought I'd go ahead and include it here as well. Something that people quickly learn about me when it comes to bladesmithing, is that I am more than willing...even eager, to freely share the things I have learned, mostly because a good part of it was freely shared with me. That said, lets move right on into the tutorial.


When I first started making blades, or if I'm making a new style of blade...I like to make a few sketches first. This helps me work out proportions, as well as a roughly pleasing overall shape. In this tutorial I'll be making blade #3.


Here you see I hung my drawing up over the forge. Anymore I just make a wooden template...but this was easier for me at the time. In this picture you can also see my 220lb post anvil, and my little paint can propane fuelled forge. I prefer forging my blades before finish shaping...but this knife could be made with as little as an angle or bench grinder, some files, a drill...and sandpaper. You will also need a heat source for hardening, but with as small as this blade is, a small mapp gas torch could probably handle getting the blade hot enough for an edge quench.


This is what I started with. A piece of Admiral Steel 1075/1080. Since then (roughly four years ago) I've learned a lot about steel, and wouldn't use this again given a choice...but it CAN make a very serviceable blade. 1050 on the lower carbon end, 1060, 1084, 1095, W1, and W2 are all usable simple carbon knife making steels as well. I will not discuss (nor do I recommend) 'junkyard' steels here, as making knives from unknown or used material can easily result in a blade that has hidden fractures...which in my opinion, is a dangerous blade. To continue though, this steel really isn't an optimum size for forging a smallish EDC, lol...but its what I had a the time...so its what we're going to use!


First order of business is to start beating it down to a 1" width. The .250" thickness is a good start for the kind of heavy use, wrapped handle blade I was making here.



Here you can see I've narrowed the entire blank, maintaining the thickness and keeping the piece true/flat.



Starting to forge in the butt.



Adding curvature and beginning to rough notch in the finger choil.



Once I had everything roughed in, I cut the blade off the steel, and stuffed it back in the forge to refine the spine.



Here we have the rough forged blade blank. Its funny looking back at these pictures now...and seeing how rough I was with a hammer back then!

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Once the forging is finished, clean up any rough areas that don't fit your template with a file or grinder. I used a mixture of a 3/4" half round file for the finger grooves, and a 4" angle grinder to give me a nice curve for the lower grip area.





Now the fun part! I used to looooove to clean up the profiles of my knives with a medium crosscut bastard file. Draw filing is surprisingly efficient, and it gave me a lot of control that I didn't have with the angle grinder. Later I would just make a couple passes on a belt sander, lol (for YEARS I've used a 3x21 harbor freight hand held unit clamped in a vice...I just finally ordered my first 2x72 last week!). You can see the draw file lines on the butt of the blade here very clearly.





Fully refined profile, spine, and edge.


After this, we soak the blade in vinegar for 24hrs or so, to loosen up all of the forge scale. Forge scale, if you don't already know...is HELL on files. It's hell on belts also. If you're careful you can use the disc grinder to rough it off...but I didn't trust myself, so it was better to chemically remove it with the vinegar. From here things get REALLY labor intensive, lol.



From here, you draw file ALL of the scale and hammer divots off of the blade. This is labor intensive and time consuming, but necessary. I also take this time to begin shaping in my bevel geometry.


All cleaned up! You can see a few ergonomic and aesthetic changes I made compared to the drawing. The sketches are really just rough drafts. It's kind of impossible to know until you get it worked out in steel, just exactly what you're going to need to make the knife functional.



Often, when I'm making a new kind of knife...I'll carry it around for a few days. Playing with it in my hands...carrying it around the house constantly when I'm not working, etc. The idea is to get a feel for the ergonomics....the overall comfort. A lot of small changes are often made during this period...and it ensures a more comfortable, overall better quality knife than if this step was skipped.

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Once everything is profiled out, its time to begin rounding edges for comfort. First I cut the edges off at a 45° angle. Then I take a strip of 120 grit cloth backed sand paper and run it firmly back and forth across the beveled edge in order to cut the corners (imagine a shoeshine motion). Once everything except the actual cutting edge is nice and rounded, we'll move on to the next step....


...which is normalization. Now...I use a completely different method for this now...but it's complex, and requires precise temperature control over extended periods of time. For a backyard blade like this, all that is necessary is to get the blade up to a heat where a magnet won't stick to it, pull it from the heat source, and let it cool to black. If the blade warps on cooling, straighten it, and repeat a minimum of three times, or until the blade stops warping.


At this point, I apply my clay for the differential hardening process. I use either Satanite (which is a type of refractory mortar), or Rutland's Furnace Cement thinned with water. In this picture, I've applied Satanite and let it dry. Next I'll post up a short video showing my then hardening process for 1075/1080.


The quenching medium was 120° brine. That blade was the same exact profile and geometry, and was made only a few months after this one.


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op

 

Lol, I'll try to get the rest up either this evening or sometime tomorrow .

 

Hey, what happent to the rest!?

~Paul

 

Lol! I'd completely forgotten it actually!

You've seen it elsewhere though .

 

Jason should be all over this thread... He probably hasnt reaponded from shorting his keyboard out drooling everytime he visits

Yoir WIP threads are amazing, thanks for all the effort you out into them

 

Thanks James!!

I guess that means I should probably finish this one, lol .

 

if I were batman, id need about fifty of these lol...

you don't have to finish it, but is a cool that to just leave hanging out here like this

 

I actually meant to finish it anyhow lol. Just forgot.

Oh and if you have Batman's number...tell him I'm taking orders would ya?

 

Wow, i bet this had become a truly evil EDC knife.
Looking forward to see the end result.