I just finished putting the final edge on this little backpacker’s knife. I forged this one out of that high manganese 1084 carbon steel I’ve been using lately (I really like this stuff). After I forged, ground, and heat treated the blade I drew back the tang and spine with a torch, hand rubbed the flats to an 800 grit satin finish, and slapped on a nice set of sambar stag scales.

The handle scales are held on with a thin layer of epoxy and some stainless steel pins that I peened over slightly to keep things nice and tight. I also put in a stainless steel lined thong hole at the heel. The blade on this knife is a hair over 5 inches and the overall length is about 10 inches. Next, I’ll need to make a leather sheath to carry it in.

Meanwhile, I have several other knives in various stages of completion cluttering up my workbench, and hopefully I’ll get a few more completed soon.

More to come soon… I hope

The men and women of our Armed Forces don’t have it easy. They are sent to inhospitable, dangerous places and are asked to risk their own safety and wellbeing in order to protect ours. They do so without hesitation, and step forward to face our enemies so that we don’t have to.

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For generations, they’ve protected this great nation, and it is because of them that we can continue to enjoy our safety and freedom today. So on this Veterans’ Day, as we take a few moments to honor their courage and sacrifice, I would also like to give a little something back.  

I will donate this hand forged knife to an active member of our military – one who is currently or soon to be deployed – in a drawing to be held at 9 pm Saturday. All you need to do is email me at my Yahoo address (my handle is dickwulf) to be eligible. If you are not active military you may enter the drawing on behalf of a close friend or relative who is. All I ask is for the winner to provide me with some kind of proof that the recipient is in fact active military. Also, if it’s not asking too much, I would very much like for the recipient to send me a photo of himself with the knife after he receives it.

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Now a bit about the knife – the blade is forged from quarter inch 1084FG (Aldo’s own fine grained, high manganese steel – this stuff get’s crazy hard). I triple normalized and triple quenched it in Parks 50, then tempered it twice and drew back the tang, ricasso and spine to a spring temper with a torch. The blade is a bit over 7 inches long from tip to choil and the overall length of the knife is 12 ¾”. The blade has a rough, fresh from the forge finish on the flats and a simple belt finish on the bevels, and the handle is wrapped with good old 550 cord.

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This knife is not much to look at, and lacks most customary refinements and accoutrements, but hey, warriors aren’t out there to look pretty either. The important thing is that it’s very sharp and built to perform. I tested it out a bit and I’m confident that it will handle some seriously hard use.

The sheath is a simple concealex rig outfitted with a MOLLE clip so it can be easily attached to a pack or a chest rig.

To me, as a bladesmith, there is not greater honor than to have my knives used and relied upon by soldiers. They are both the toughest and worthiest of customers. So it will give me great pleasure to give this knife to a soldier today.

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To all those who serve, and all those who have served, thank you.

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UPDATE – Congratulations to the happy new owner of this knife, SGT JZH of the 340th Psychological Operations Company.

Here’s a shot of Nick’s new deployment knife. I hastily snapped this photo with my iPhone from the bed of my truck as the sun was getting low in the sky, but I think it came out OK.

I forged this blade from a bar of 1095 high carbon steel and gave it a Japanese style clay-coated heat treatment to fully harden the cutting edges while leaving the spine and ricasso a bit softer and more ductile. I polished it out to 600 grit and gave it a light acid etch to reveal the hamon. I also marked the blade with Nick’s last name and his unit insignia using an electro-chemical etching process. The blade, a quarter inch thick at the ricasso, has a primary cutting edge of about 4 inches and a raised, sharpened clip that extends back a little over 2 inches from the point. The tang extends all the way through the handle and protrudes slightly from the butt, creating a handy glass-breaker (or cranium-cracker, depending on the situation). The handle is tan G10 with a notched epoxy composite inlay in front of the thumb ramp to provide purchase. It’s held on with epoxy and two slightly flared stainless steel hollow tubes.

Next I’ll make a sheath, and then off it goes…

A few months ago I shipped my “little grunt” knife out to a paratrooper from the 173D Airborne Brigade, and at that time I also informed him that, whether he liked it or not, I had enlisted him as my official field tester. Since then he has found ample opportunity to carry and use the knife in the field – in fact, he’s out on a training mission in Germany as I write this – and I’m pleased to report that he has been very happy with the knife’s performance. He has also provided me with extensive and valuable feedback, much of which I am incorporating in a new knife that I’m finishing up for him right now. This new knife will be his official deployment knife when he ships out into the warzone next year and I will post pictures of it in a few days when it’s complete. In the meantime, here’s a little teaser pic.

A few of the other soldiers in the unit have also contacted me requesting deployment knives. One of the soldiers - we’ll call him SGT H. – asked me to build him a knife that will serve him both on the battlefield and out in the woods in his home state of Kentucky. In addition to being a paratrooper, SGT H. is a skilled bowhunter, which is another activity where a good knife is essential to have. He requested a mid-sized knife with a comfortable, ergonomic handle and an as-forged finish on the blade, so, after we exchanged a few emails discussing various other design elements I sent him a sketch, which he then approved. Yesterday I started forging.

I brought my camera out to the shop and snapped a few photos along the way so that SGT H. could get a glimpse of the actual process and some of the various steps involved in making his custom hand forged knife. So I figured I might as well publish the pictures here on on Dick’s Workshop as well. So here it goes, on the techniques page under “The Shop”, right  here…

Here’s a knife I just finished. I gave this one a nice smooth 600-grit hand-rubbed finish on the blade so it would look a bit cleaner than some of the simple belt-finished knives I’ve made lately. Hand-rubbing is slow and tedious work but it does look nice when it’s done well. Strangely enough, however, when I told the wifey I was headed out to the shop to rub one out the other night, she looked at my kinda funny, then just rolled her eyes and walked away. I guess she prefers a belt finish…

The handle on this one is made out of bone micarta scales held on with epoxy and slightly flared stainless steel thong hole tubing. You don’t even want to know what the wife said when I started talking about my thong hole.

The flats and edges still retain a forge finish and provide a nice contrast, both in color and texture, to the hand-rubbed blade. Forged from 1/4″ 1084 carbon steel, the thinly ground blade is 5″ long and the overall knife is just shy of 10″.  This one’s quite pointy, and VERY sharp. Much like my wife….