Here I have started to draw down the area that will be the handle. The billet is very thick at this point and we will be doing a ladder pattern, so I will be cutting grooves in the side of the billet, and then forging them flat again.
Here the billet is marked with marker and a ruler to give me lines to grind to. The pattern is one off on the other side so that I am not cutting a grove in the same place on both sides. This causes the grooves to be alternating.
Here is the setup that I use to cut in the grooves for the ladder pattern. This was the first time I tried this and was fairly happy with the result. You could also cut different with groves by changing wheels if you wanted.
Here is a shot of the grooves that have been cut into the billet.
A view from the top
At this point I realized that I had burned a small hole in my jeans. I really don�t know if it happened during grinding or during some of the previous forge welding. One thing I have learned making knives is that you will probably burn holes in your clothes and aprons. When this happens it is a good idea to cut out around the hold to remove the charred cloth. Once the cloth is charred it will reignite with the smallest of sparks.
Here the billet has been put back into the forge and pressed flat again. I was not really sure what the final dimensions of the steel would end up, but it worked out. The bar is about � inch thick and around 15 inches.
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Here is the template of the chef knife we will be making. The blade with be about ten inches with a 15 inch overall length. The width of the blade is over two inches. Its BIG.
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The template is under the billet so that you can see how much I still have to forge the blade wider. I am going to try to forge as evenly as possible to reduce the distortion of the pattern.
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