Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades What was the first knife you made or tried to make??

My fancy anvil is a piece of rail road rail, but it works fine. Here I am peening the pins. Do this slowly because nickel silver is three times as hard as brass and if you rush it, you'll break it off. What you want to do here is to make the whole pin fat and make it tighten up in the hole, but BEFORE you do this, first thoroughly clean the tang and the nickel silver and apply soldering flux. I keep everything clamped tightly with a vice grip to make sure it stays in one place while I work on it.



This is what it should look like when you get finished.



Here I have re applied the flux under and around the bolster, applied Heat Stop or Block-It to the blade to keep the heat from running, and am heating the tang behind the bloster. When I apply the silver solder in front, it will run to the heat and under the bolster. Make sure you get a good solder joint becaue if there are any holidays in it, they will show up when you finish it off.



The joint should be completely filled all the way around like this. You do the other two nickel silver pieces the same way and be careful to not let the heat run back on your last solder joint or it'll melt the joint and you'll have problems. Keep a lot of Block-It in the required places and be sure to clean the joints and apply solder flux to get good joints.

Hang on, we have just got started. More to come unless you boys get bored with this. I can stop any time. Does anybody see any major errors so far or see a way it could have been done better or faster?