Hand-Forged Locking Folding Knife

This was my attempt at hand forging and fitting a lockback folding knife. Rather than ordering a steel billet, I decided that an old rusted pry bar would be a cost effective and robust choice to begin this project.

Old Pry Bar

Folding Knife to Reference

Apologies for the terrible image; it was all that I could find from this stage.

Thanks to the long geometry of the pry bar, forging was easier and tongs were only necessary when i had to hold the metal by the end that was being forged. Otherwise, water cooling the opposing end kept it cool enough to hold directly while forging.

Once the profile and bevels were roughly achieved, I punched and drifted a hole near the spine of the blade to achieve a desired spine shape and allow for easier unfolding. Using various punches, a rough, porous, and chaotic raw forged texture around the hole was created. The intention was to ensure the texture around the hole was recessed enough to remain once both sides of the blade were ground flat.

The excess material was hot cut off.

The flats and bevels were ground into the blade. I was content with the location of the hole, the texture of , and how the negative space fit along the spine's shape.

The choil geometry was left with excess material and unrefined, as I wanted to finalize the handle transition, appearance, and ergonomics first.

For reference, an old Gerber folding knife was disassembled and so that its mechanisms and geometry required to properly fold could be referenced.

My blade was annealed, a hole was drilled at the pivot point, a bench grinder was used to round the area by the pivot point, and files were used to refine the interaction between my blade and the disassembled Gerber knife's parts.

By the end of this stage, the mechanism worked perfectly. There was just enough resistance to keep the blade from deploying unwantedly, it locked in place with tight tolerance and utmost security, and smoothly unlocked and folded back into place.

At this stage, my reluctance to use the proper medium for quenching led to catastrophic failure.

I did not own quench oil at this time, and decided to use hot water, motor oil, or cooking oil. (Can't remember which one I used) Even after normalization cycles to refine grain structure and reduce internal stresses of the steel, the quench was too intense and created the three cracks along the edge of the blade.

There is a golden rule of bladesmithing that I would frequently hear within online communities: "Knifemakers don't make mistakes, they make smaller knives." Unfortunately, I had no interest in making a folding knife with a 1" blade.

This failed project still hurts to think about. But at least the blade now lives a peaceful life on a good friend's desk as a paperweight.