startin a knife

[Hammerhead]

well iv messed around with my forge alittle befor and iv been reading a few books my grandpa gave me and this weekend im plannin on makeing my first knife. ill keep yall ubdated

[Oldknfmkr]

That's good to hear. Just keep your steel hot when pounding. What king of steel are you using?
Mike

[Hammerhead]

railroad spikes. i heard they make decent knifes

[Razor]

They sure do, I've made dozens of 'em..
make pretty good marlin spikes too,
A word of advice, use as big a hammer as you can stand, makes for much faster progress....
I use a one handed 8 lb sledge for roughing out..and a 3 lb engineers hammer for touching up.

[gordy]

          Rail road spikes are great steel to work with . Once you get some practice , you can also make hawk heads from spikes . Post photos when you can .

                                                           

[Hammerhead]

will do brother

[ErikPrice1@msn.com]

Hammerhead as soon as mine is up and running we'll have to keep each other on it.

[Hammerhead]

sounds good. i live right next to a railroad track so i got alot of blacksmithin to do

[ErikPrice1@msn.com]

We live down the road from one. Everytime we walk down there my nephew picks stuff up. I have a 55 gallon drum full of stuff.

[canyonman]

Be careful of those RR spikes. You may find they don't get as hard as you would like them to, for a knife. The issue is the amount of carbon in the make up of the steel, you need at least .50 percent to create enough carbide for hardenable steel and even the ones marked HC fall just shy. Should be good for hawks though.

Larry

[Razor]

Old ball peen hammer heads make excellent spike 'hawks...

[Watauga]

sounds good. i live right next to a railroad track so i got alot of blacksmithin to do

Don't use the spikes in the tracks it might cause a problem and the  train falls off the tracks!     
Just Kidding Hammerhead  

[ErikPrice1@msn.com]

Old ball peen hammer heads make excellent spike 'hawks...

Thats a great bit of info for hammerhead, I've been picking them up at yard sales 50 cents to a dollar. Another place to look for them is  recycle yards. Alot of people recycle them when there handles break. One of our local thrift stores recycles metal and they let me dig through it before they send it off.