Found this old leaf spring in an antique shop in Arkansas. My best guess it that it was a spring for the seat on a horse drawn wagon or buggy. I thought it would be cool to make a few really rustic knives from it.
It's going to take a lot of work but I look forward to it.
I'll post some pictures as I go.

Outer band flattened and annealed.

Mike I hope you will keep posting the photo updates. It's fasinating to me how you turn something like that into a knife! Thanks for sharing sir!

I will, I'm going to have to do another annealing process on these. 1450° anneals 1095 just fine but these are still a little to hard to drill through. I'll run them a 1525° and that should do the trick.

Watching

Are you back in Texas yet?

Wrapped up my job today, flying home Friday.

Good deal

cool!

Inner leaf cut and most of the rust knocked off, ready to heat up and flatten. Surprisingly this leaf isn't as hard as the outer leaf. I'm guessing the outer leaf acted as an overload spring while the inner leaf supplied more spring for a softer ride. I have no idea how they went about controlling the hardness with the equipment available over a 100 years ago.
The outer leaf sections are currently going through their second annealing process. That takes a while.

Very kool project....

Outer leaf sections soaking in rust remover.


Inner leaf hot enough to flatten.



Inner leaf at annealing temp.


Inner leaf annealed and ready to clean up.

Making a little progress.

Two months later......



Jes kidding...very kool!

Heat treat complete.


After two tempers and ready to go back to the grinder. Cut some Rosewood for the scales.

That's gonna look awesome.......old steel is really amazing stuff......

Blade finish ground. This is the only blade that I've ever made that I didn't sand all of the grind lines out of but in keeping with the rustic theme I only took it to 180 grit and left it there.


Rosewood scales epoxied and curing.

Getting closer. My wife saw it and said " that's cool, I'll bet you could sell that"

Haha, she may be on to something. That is cool!

I love it.

Looking Good.
Mike, what do you use to cut the shape of your knives? Forrest

Normally get them semi close with a metal cutting band saw and then go to the grinder. I did this one with an angle grinder and a cut off wheel and paid the price.

I'm really liking that knife, what would something like that cost?

Turned out beautiful Sir!

Ouch Mike that had to hurt! Be careful sir.........