The Armour Archive

I made these from the "hack saw" blade showm [rockwell 50] Does this give you any ideas?

Many of these blades have the cutting edge a different steel than the back, with the backs having much less carbon/alloy content---helps prevent the blades from breaking when they bind in a cut.

Thomas

There is an entire book on knifemaking that goes into getting the blades out of hacksaw, commercial bandsaw, and old mill blades. (The big round ones.). You can get the "current" blades pretty easily, usually by just asking around at sawmills.. once they are beyond resharpening again, they usually have to scrap them anyway.

The older "big" blades are harder to find.. but can still be located from scrap yards and such.

Old two-man saws can be used as well.

And, on the woodworking front, hacksaw blades have been used about forever to cut down and make scratch stock, mini-planes/scrapers for detail work, etc.

Oh, and 10 of those blades (which are 24" by 2.5 mm thick, and 2" high) sells for about 248$.

Thats a lot of work to recoup your cost.

I have been hording one of thoes blades for years.
Chupa wants to make a machete out of it. one he can gather fire wood on the river. I wanted to make a short sword.

Cool knives thanks for the pics.

I have been wanting to try my luck with making a knife for some time now. The problem is, I only have hand tools, and no means of heat treating. I have a bunch of patterns and designs and ideas in my head, but I can't really pull them off without a forge. I have a worn out file that I found, and it's the perfect size (12 in.) to make an Arkansas toothpick or dagger out of. How could I go about drawing out the temper enough to grind it down? Would putting it in the oven soften it up enough to grind without making the steel too soft?