A Spike knife for Larry

Friends are a great thing to have. A good friend of mine named Margot shared my post about Rob’s spike knife with one of her friends in San Francisco and he ended up ordering one! He also liked the box with the hand print on it well enough to request his came with one as well as a video. Here is the video. It is extremely gratifying when someone you have never met shows a great deal of enthusiasm for something you’ve done. I am looking forward to see what else emerges from the fires at Fox River Forge.

A spike knife for Eric

A while back I made a knife for my friend Rob out of a railroad spike and he showed it off to one of his friends who decided he wanted one as well. Rob contacted me and we planned one out. I also decided to make a video of this process so here it is. So there. I got it packaged up and shipped out to Washington State.

The "Alpha Bastard"

I recently made a knife out of a bastard file. I was working around the forge and I saw something in the dirt that looked too uniform to be a rock. I dug it out and discovered it was an old broken bastard file. I’ve heard of people using files to make knives because of the high carbon steel used in file making. I’m really proud of this knife and how it came out. I look forward to making a few more. There are things I’d like to try out, specifically with the handle.

My first "Blacksmithing Tattoo"

I was recently at the forge working on a pair of “bolt head” tongs. I was preparing to make a rivet to assemble them so I put a heat on my rivet stock and cut a piece off. I accidentally cut all the way through the stock so a chunk of very hot steel fell on the wood floor and immediately began to smolder. I bent dawn to pick up the chunk with my tongs and put my hand on the anvil for support. Quite quickly I realized the error of my ways as I heard and felt the other section of stock start burning my hand. I yanked my hand off of it and immediately plunged it into my quench bucket. I went over to my lunchbox which was filled with ice, but some in a handkerchief and began icing the burn. I grabbed the two hot chunks of steel with my tongs and tossed them in the quench bucket; made sure nothing was on fire and applied some burn cream I keep in my first aid kit. I then made this video. I have spent the last 16+ years working in manufacturing and have been very well trained on safe working procedures. This video demonstrates that all the training in the world is useless if you ignore it. I was working with a scrap of steel less than 6” long and heated to around 1300°. I should have been wearing gloves. If I had been wearing gloves I may have not suffered any sort of injury. Instead I got a 3rd degree burn and if not for the first aid training I got at work and some advice taken from a blacksmith, whose class I attended last year, the results may have been far worse. I encourage everyone to take at least a basic First Aid and CPR class. I won’t go into a long and preachy sermon about preparedness here (I’ll do it here instead) I will simply ask that you please take the time to learn how to do whatever you do safely..and then do it that way!!