{"id":8,"date":"2011-10-12T13:45:22","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T13:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/?p=8"},"modified":"2013-02-10T18:14:56","modified_gmt":"2013-02-10T18:14:56","slug":"a-knife-from-a-nail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/2011\/10\/12\/a-knife-from-a-nail\/","title":{"rendered":"a knife from a nail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forging is fun. Steel needs to be hot forged but iron can be cold forged, needing only to be annealed when hammering has hardened it.<\/p>\n $\"nails\"$ <\/a> three small knives\n

Common nails are made of iron. Sometimes common nails can be\u00a0 of mild steel, in which case you must anneal them (bringing the steel to red-heath and letting it air-cool) when you notice they are hardening.\u00a0 Any nail, around 3 inches long, can be turned into a small knife, old bent nails cost nothing so you can try and explore different shapes at no cost and in no time.
\nOr you can make small traditional shapes such as scimitar, kukri, kriss (haven’t tried yet).<\/p>\n

To make a simple blade<\/strong><\/p>\n

$\"bending$ <\/a> 1) The\u00a0blade\u00a0has\u00a0to\u00a0be\u00a0thinner\u00a0on the cutting edge\u00a0and\u00a0thicker on the back, but the edge that gets thinner becomes longer because the squeezed metal must find space anyway: your blade would bend upwards.
\nSo\u00a0you first\u00a0slightly\u00a0bend\u00a0the\u00a0blade\u00a0then\u00a0hammer the inside\u00a0of the curve.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>2) Blow after blow you will\u00a0see the blade straightening. The point of the nail gets the right shape by itself if you hammer it evenly.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>3) The stake you\u2019re hammering on had better be a bit rounded since you have to \u201cpinch\u201d more one side of the blade.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>4) Now you can round off the head of the nail, hammering its edge. As the diameter of the head diminishes, a protruding edge develops on both sides of the head.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>5) You tuck in this edge.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>6) You flatten the part of the nail between the head and the blade to make the shank.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>7) Now you must anneal the shank: bring it to red heath with a flame and leti it air cool.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>8) Hold the shank with two pliers and twist it.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>9) Some hammer blows on the twist will straighten it. Now you have a small handle with a good grip.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>10) Hammer work is over, notice the colour changes from black where the iron was heated, to blue and yellow.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>Now you can file the blade to sharpen it and do a bit of filing on\u00a0 the shank.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>11) If you want you can hone the cutting edge and go over the rest of the knife with different grades of abrasive paper. Don’t overdo it, a kind of roughness is part of blacksmithing’s appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forging is fun. Steel needs to be hot forged but iron can be cold forged, needing only to be annealed when hammering has hardened it. Common nails are made of iron. Sometimes common nails can be\u00a0 of mild steel, in which case you must anneal them (bringing the steel to red-heath and letting it air-cool) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/pennabilli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}