Forge a Knife

Step 4 Pounding out a knife, pointing the tip

You can't finish one part of the knife at a time, you have to work the whole thing slowly. If you hammer out the blade thin, then try to do the tang (handle) part, the thin blade will be ruined by to much heat while the handle won't be ready to work yet.

I'm starting with the blade end. I'll thin the steel some and start a point on the tip.

Comments

[0087adam]

what about squeezing it with a vise to make it uniformly flat?

[jtobako]

Several problems-finding a vice powerful enough to do it cold or fast enough to do it before the heat is transferred to the vice. Either way, you end up letting a big tool do all the fun stuff, and you are just left with 'stock removal' (grinding off everything that doesn't look like your knife). Drop forging is what you are thinking of, stick a chunk of hot metal into a die that smashes it into shape. Of course the press starts at something like 100 grand plus another 20 thou for each different die...numbers are just guesses, but still several orders of magnitude more than I have for a hobby ; )

[iamjtg]

Those numbers are very accurate.