KV Hand Forged

In under 1 hour, I hand forged a small knife.

Last night, I recorded the entire process of forging a small knife. I started with a small scrap of O1 tool steel, leftover from a prior project. It was a bit of a personal challenge, and a bit of fun, combined, and I think you may find it interesting.

In this video you will see me spend a lot of time cranking my little hand-operated forge. You'll also watch as I screw up my order of operations, beginning with the blade instead of the handle, and along the way you'll get to see all the times I drop my work, all the bumbling and fumbling, and sometimes I'll even talk to the camera about why I am doing what I'm doing.

By the end of it, I have forged the whole thing, beveled the edges, punched holes in the handle for pins, done one thermal cycle (usually I do three, and they'd be longer cycles) and quenched in oil. The video ends when the knife goes in the tempering oven, because then I had to wait an hour.

I'll finish this knife and put up some pictures. In the mean time, while I'm working on other, more important projects, please enjoy this hour long, uncut video.

If you have questions, please ask, I'll do my best to answer your questions.

Video update!