Forging a knife from a wire rope (Cable Damascus) part 2

In this video I finish the knife I forged from a wire rope in the last video.

Part 1:    • Forging a knife from a wire rope (Cab...  

Getting the integral bolster fit to the handle was not as hard as I thought it would be. I had a few challenges going into completing this knife. But as always, if you take your time and check your work frequently it works out.

One thing I did prefer about the integral was that after the handle was on I was still able to do work to the blade and handle. This is compared to a full tang where once the handle scales are on you can’t really do any work to the blade like etching, polishing, etc. Or it’s a lot harder anyway. And when sanding the handle on a full tang you have to be very careful to not scratch the blade. On this knife I wasn't worried because I could fix it if I scratched it so I thought that was pretty cool.

I was not able to preserve the wire rope in the bolster as well as I wanted, I wanted it to have more of a rough forged look but I still like it. There were some inclusions in the blade, some of them are near the edge which is less than ideal. The unfortunate thing is these inclusions did not show up until the handle was shaped and the bevels were ground. At that point I was already heavily commited in time and materials so I decided to roll ahead. The edge itself is free from inclusions and I will just have to let my buddy Chase put this through its true test and we’ll go from there. Perhaps next time I need to presoak the wire rope in degreaser for a couple days. I have seen other people do this and I didn't think it was necessary especially after there was virtually no smoke putting it into the forge after spraying it with brakleen. Normally there is a ton of smoke coming from it if I don't clean it. It is possible that I also simply did not have the steel hot enough when forging the blade. I got it up to forge welding temperature but not for every single heat. These are things I will be noting down and trying to improve the next time I forge wire rope.

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