Just a couple of quick shots and some comments on grinding.
When you do a damascus/core/damascus weld-up, a big piece of the game is getting the core in the right place. If it gets bashed too hard and goes out of position then you may wind up with a piece of something on the edge of the knife that is not core – and that’s super bad if you’ve used facings (like wrought iron!) that won’t harden. Then you’ve got a dead spot in the cutting edge and you may as well throw the whole thing away if you can’t grind it back. If you look a bit south of midway you can see one of those spots but I’m not worried about it because final shaping and polishing will pull that back some. It won’t be where I want it but it’ll be acceptable.
So, usually what you do is quench the blade, temper it, then do a rough grind for where you think the edge is going to be, then etch it and see what it looks like. It’s one of the moments of truth.
That’s the edge of the huge pwning knife. It looks like everything is in place. That’s just one side of it but the other side looks OK, too. Sometimes you have to adjust which side gets more metal removed, and then you have to flatten the side more, which is a fraught operation.
You can clearly see the nickel transition line that I put in there. Best of all, there are no big holes in the welds. It all looks good and tight, which is nice because the side-pieces were cut and stacked and welded a total of 3 times to get that much layering.
My faux suminigashi on the sides is a mixture of stuff and it’s super tough. Getting scratches out of it turns out to be exceedingly unpleasant. Oh, well.
That is the one with twist damascus on the sides, ground back to show the 1095 core and transition line. That thing is going to look wild after it’s parkerized or etched or soaked in coffee. The twist should turn into mad black and silver.
Again, everything appears to be placed where I wanted it. I’m going to call that a successful operation. Best of all, both blades quenched straight and hard and true and I’ve tempered them back until they are springy and tough. At this stage, I usually get frustrated with polishing out scratches and let them sit on the bench for a while to see if the scratches just sort of … come out on their own. So far that has not happened but you never know!
Oooo beautiful!
Yeah that method of “polishing” will probably not work… :-D I’ve thought about trying erosion, sometimes, when I have a tricky piece of polishing to do, but that does not seem likely to work in my lifetime. Maybe eventually.
Lovely!
Is polishing something you could do while listening to podcasts? I knit to podcasts and find the combination of repetitive action, keeping track of where I have got to and a good informative podcast to be rather soothing, not so soothing that I can’t keep track of where I am, but at the end of the process I end up relaxed.
I think they need handles to count as knives :P
@Jazzlet
I find polishing them like that; once you get into it, it’s somewhat meditative. I don’t look forward to it, but a couple of hours of it goes pretty quick
Jazzlet and dangerousbeans:
I also find it relaxing and I usually have a podcast or audiobook going, and just get lost in the whole thing. Sometimes, time passes as though it’s not happening and I “wake up” when it starts getting dark and the whole time is a sort of blurry memory.
I wonder if we’re in light trance states, or something. When I’m grinding blades I am pretty sure that I am; It’s a boring task that requires near complete attention, so the remaining cycles of “me”-processing feel disjointed and fragmentary, like dreams almost. It’s very relaxing except the next day my hands don’t work and my arms hurt.
it does feel like a trance state, although i find i snap out after a few hours at most. my brain is bad at those sort things, i can’t meditate for instance, so it makes sense to me that i don’t stick in it as long
dangerousbeans@#5:
it does feel like a trance state, although i find i snap out after a few hours at most. my brain is bad at those sort things, i can’t meditate for instance, so it makes sense to me that i don’t stick in it as long
It could be you get tired. Usually what snaps me out is when I get hungry and my blood sugar drops.
Today I got stuck into broaching handles and glueing them up. That is something I normally hate to do, but I completely cleared my bench (which had 5 blade/block sets ready to fit) with just an interruption to move a table-saw. That hit me like a brick between the eyes because I still thought it was 11:00am when I tranced out, but it was actually around 3:00pm and I had not been tracking time at all.
I have been meaning to do some postings about some of this stuff but I don’t know what the current neuroscience is regarding attention (it has changed a lot in even the last 5 years) and perception. But, I think I know what’s going on. I just get uncomfortable meandering about in real science when all I have is self-assessment of my own perceptions.
PS – thinking of some kind of great big nickel silver cap/bolster on the long one. It’s actually gotten thin enough that you could slice brisket with it, if you were carving something gigantic. It looks more like a weapon, though.
Only kinda relevant, but you might enjoy this cartoon.
https://swordscomic.com/swords/CCCXXXI/
Maybe I should start keeping a log of blade smiting trances? 😛
I put snapping out down to ptsd hypervigilance. My brain goes “fuck, we haven’t been paying attention! There might be a threat!”. (I’m in my shed, the only things that will hurt me are the forge, grinder, buffer, mill, angle grinder, and various sharp things. Most of which are turned off or stored)
Big thin chefs knife seems like a good one for someone who cooks a lot of veggies
dangerousbeans@#8:
Maybe I should start keeping a log of blade smiting trances? 😛
I put snapping out down to ptsd hypervigilance. My brain goes “fuck, we haven’t been paying attention! There might be a threat!”.
Up to you! I’d only do it if it seemed like it might somehow be valuable, but I’m lazy.
PTSD hypervigilance sounds like a good possible, too.
In my case I run my body to the point where I’ll be standing in front of the forge and feel a wave of weak dizziness and realize I have not had anything except water in 10 hours. Now I keep little packs of chips and beef jerky and sugary garbage in case I need to get back on my feet before I finish.
Big thin chefs knife seems like a good one for someone who cooks a lot of veggies
Snickersnee the cabbage beheader!
Marcus and dangerousbeans @various above
I was sent on a mindfulness course at one point and the state I get in to doing say an hour of that is, as far as I can tell, just like the state I get into when doing a long session on the needles, just rather shorter, in other words the mindfulness people would say you were ‘being in the moment’. I find the knitting a better way to do this than the mindfulness sessions, as I just can’t help getting twitchy trying to do long sessions (of what feels like nothing) on my own, but doing things mindfully was very much encouraged so there’s that. Essentially what the mindful people want you to do is to focus on something, and to continue to do that whatever irrelevant stuff passes through your brain while you are focusing, you note your distraction, set it aside, then return to your focus and you go on setting aside the distractons as they come up for the whole of your session. This is suposed to give your monkey brain a break from worrying, from ruminating, from whatever ails you in fact; I am not convinced it is the heal all some claim, but do think its a useful technique, although for me I do seem to need an activity to focus on, but I don’t think that’s a problem in itself, although it can become one if hours go by as you have both experienced.
@Jazzlet
i have the same sort of experience with mindfulness, although maybe to a stronger degree. activities like cycling, working on blades, or knitting if i had ever managed to get into it, are fine. actual mindfulness practice just makes me angry.
it would be kind of funny if it weren’t unpleasant
dangerousbeans @#11
Actual mindfulness, especially when body focused nearly always depresses me. I’ve a chronic pain problem and focusing on my body inevitably means focusing on the pain which is not helpful!