To purchase a knife from high-quality steel, of course, is not a problem. If there is not enough assortment of conventional or branded blades, you can find a specialist working on an individual order.
However, you can go another way - to make a knife yourself. For the first time, forging the perfect blade, most likely, will not work, but who knows ...
And a homemade cable knife is a worthwhile undertaking, the result can be a high-quality blade with a visible pattern on the blade, formed by mixing layers of metal during its forging.
Material selection
In our time, only true connoisseurs of this craft are engaged in the manufacture of blades. However, even a novice blacksmith and anyone can try to forge a homemade knife.
The easiest way to do this is from a piece of thick reinforcement, an old file or a segment of an automobile spring. It’s a little harder to undo the drill or bearing race. You can get an interesting result from the worked chain from a chainsaw or car engine.
Another material that, after forging, can become a quality blade is a cable. Its cores are made of carbon steel, capable of holding a sharp tip after hardening. If you manage to keep the wicker pattern after forging, you can get a very original blade, remotely resembling wild Damascus steel.
What you need to know to figure out how to make a knife from a cable? Two important nuances: first - whether the properties of high-carbon material will be preserved during processing; the second is whether a visible pattern appears on the blade, gracefully turning into a sharpened point.
Damascus steel
Sharp, plastic and reliable blades with a patterned pattern on the blade used to be called damask (according to one version, from the province of Fulad in Persia, where they were made). Such characteristics and visible effect were achieved by various methods.
Steel could be melted in a crucible by metallurgical casting, experimenting with the composition of the material. Another option is to “weld” steel strips of different hardness in the forge and then unzip the resulting workpiece. Blades forged by blacksmiths according to a special technique were called Damascus.
They differ precisely in the manufacturing method and technology, and not in the characteristics and severity of the pattern. Having unzipped a knife from a cable, you can try to create a blade with your own hands, vaguely reminiscent of such material. And although the drawing on the blade is not an end in itself, it is nevertheless a distinctive feature of Damascus steel.
Forging tools and materials
To forge a knife from a rope with your own hands, you need to master the craft of a blacksmith at least at a minimum level. To do this, you need a pair of hammers: one massive (up to 2 kg), the other - lighter (up to 0.5 kg) for fine work, pincers, anvil and a makeshift furnace (blacksmith's furnace) with forced air supply.
Do not do without a grinder, grinder, electric welding during the manufacturing process. You will need a vise and an adjustable wrench. Charcoal from breeds giving a high heat can serve as fuel for the crucible, because the workpiece will have to be heated to temperatures above 1200 ° C.
For better "welding" you can use borax as a flux. It removes scale and prevents carbon from burning out of the material. It is also necessary to prepare oil for hardening, to ensure safety.
The opportunity to use someone’s forge workshop or the forge of an enterprise with a mechanical hammer will greatly facilitate the task.
Preparatory operations
To make a knife from a cable, you first need to make a sketch or sketch on paper. Then you have to find the right material. It is necessary to check it and at least remotely determine the carbon composition in it.
It depends on whether the future blade will take hardening, whether it will hold a tip and whether it will be possible to carry out blacksmith “welding”. Check for sparks from a grindstone. A moderately dense orange sheaf of them will mean that welding is possible, carbon in steel contains about 1%, which is enough for hardening.
Next, you need to cut a piece of cable of the required length. At this stage, are determined with the method of manufacturing the handle. It can be from a single piece of cable without forging. The knife will look original, but have a decent weight.
Another option is to weld a reinforcement bar to an electric wire segment. It is convenient to hold onto such a handle by heating the workpiece in the crucible and treating it with hammers. Then you can make a grip on it or, having riveted it, install decorative overlays.
Before starting work, the cable is pulled together with steel wire clamps in several places. This is done so that in the process of heating thin veins do not untangle.
How to forge a knife from a cable?
A preform is laid in the kindled crucible and allowed to warm up to 800 ° C. At this stage, the wire strands are released (annealing), the material becomes malleable. Additionally burns out oil and dirt.
After cooling, the workpiece is clamped in a vice and one of the ends of the cable is welded. With an adjustable wrench, it “twists” along the course of weaving to the maximum density. The other edge is scalded with the simultaneous fastening of a piece of reinforcement for ease of operation.
Wire clamps are removed, the workpiece warms up to 1200 ° C, and is copiously sprinkled with brown. This is necessary for better penetration. After repeated heating, the forging “welding” is performed. With a heavy hammer, the cable unfolds on a plane, periodically sprinkled with a brown.
The workpiece is constantly heated. The more often this is done, the more intensive the forging is, the better the material is “welded”. After rough processing, they proceed to forging the blade, the future cutting edge, and the shank. At this stage, a smaller mass hammer is used more, giving the workpiece outlines resembling a sketch of a future blade.
Technology challenges
It is necessary to constantly monitor the temperature of the workpiece, not allowing it to cool. Working with a heavy hammer, especially without proper practice and experience, you can easily damage the curls of the cable in places where there should be a clear pattern of weaving. Unwanted hits with an edge or angle of a sledgehammer on a heated workpiece leave deep dents that cannot always be grinded.
During operation, the process of burning carbon out of metal is inevitable. There are craftsmen who unfasten a knife from a rope on dense wood laid on the anvil plane. When it comes into contact with a heated metal, it smolders, the oxygen of the air in the place of contact is burned, which reduces the degree of carbon burnout from the material. In addition, by unfastening the cable on a tree, you achieve that the workpiece cools down more slowly, you can do more work in one cycle.
Special approach
Forging a knife from a cable is possible using another technology. There are craftsmen who, before blacksmithing “welding,” pack the annealed and compacted cable blanks of the required length into a piece of stainless steel pipe. Its diameter is selected so that the cable enters it very tightly, with some effort.
Both ends of such a case are welded with electric welding, fusing the ends of the cable with the pipe. The workpiece is heated to a temperature of 1200-1300 ° C and is unhooked in this form. Alloyed stainless steel pipe with a cable does not weld, and serves only as a protective cover against uneven forging. In addition, a red-hot cable does not come into contact with oxygen in the air and the carbon in it burns out forging minimally.
If you use a hydraulic press, you can significantly facilitate the forging "welding". After heating to 1300 ° C, the case with the cable inside is placed under load and left to cool. If you use matrices, then immediately you can form thickenings under the neck for the transition from the blade to the handle and the edge of the shank. At the next heating by forging through the case, the shape of the blade is finalized.
After cooling, the pipe is cut on an emery from the end, where the tip will be. The case carefully opens with a chisel. Further processing of the workpiece occurs on the emery wheel. Pre-cut the excess areas, make the blade descents without final sharpening.
Heat treatment
The hardening of the blade is as important as the choice of steel. According to technology, the knife from the cable after forging has voltage, it must be removed. To do this, the preform is heated to 800 ° C and allowed to cool.
Hardening is carried out when the blade is heated to 1200 ° C. It is lowered with its tip down into the heated oil and held motionless. The blade must then be released. It is cleaned of carbon deposits, heated to 200 ° C and again immersed in oil.
Some masters temper knives through oil (lower for two seconds), and then put in salted water.
Etching and Finishing
After heat treatment, the knife from the cable is polished, the final finishing of the blade of the blade and the shank for fixing the handle is made. To develop the pattern, the preform is dipped in a solution (5%) of ferric chloride and left to be etched. Processing time depends on the desired effect and can be up to one hour.
If before this, a stencil is glued to the blade on which the manufacturer’s logo will be cut (initials or any pattern), as a result, it will be printed on steel and will indicate the authorship of the blade. After that, fine grinding is carried out with fine-grained emery paper and polishing of the blade.
Before this operation or already after, the selected type of handle is mounted. This may be lining of valuable wood with an interesting texture, composing washers of various materials in any order or, for example, a piece of deer antler.
It may not be possible to make such an original and expertly executed knife from a rope (photo from the top) the first time, but if you want to master the craft of making blades, you should strive for this result.