Christmas Work Begins

I’m going to try doing something a bit different this year for Christmas presents for the men in the family. Instead of some neat little trinket from Amazon I’m gonna try to make knives, like 12 of them.

To do this I’ll be making two batches, 6 knives at a time. I started the work yesterday evening shortly after I got home and worked steadily for about 2hrs. Starting with a long strip of steel known to have good hardenability qualities I heated it up and hot cut it into workable sections.  Placing all 6 steel bars into the fire at once, I could work one piece and switch immediately to another without pause. I quickly found out that while this allows me to work MUCH faster than if I were just making one knife at a time, this method wears your arm out quick!

On to the pictures.