Forging a knife from a wire rope (Cable Damascus)

In this video I forge a knife from a piece of wire rope. I get as far as the heat treatment and will continue in the next video. I've forged wire rope twice in the past with varying results but I still went into this with confidence as I felt I knew where things went wrong last time. The strategy going in was lots of flux, make sure to lightly tap on the first few heats to allow the flux and impurities to squeeze out. Then lots of heat for the forge welding. Very hot. In fact I didn't know my forge could get steel this hot. So far things are going well.

This knife features my first integral bolster. I forged an integral a while back but never finished the knife so that one doesn't count.

This is also the first knife project using my new 4 lb. rounding hammer by Ethan Harty. This hammer has been a pleasure to use. The handle is great, longer than the handle on the mini sledge I was using before. And the weight is also just right. This allowed me to give nice hard swings for the forge welding. And the handle has flat sides which made it really easy to hold the hammer and get no deflected hits from the hammer turning in my hand when I strike. The red hammer that you see me strike the guillotine with is the hammer I previously used for 90% of my forging. It still has its uses.

Thanks for watching. I hope you consider subscribing! I am getting close to 500 subs and maybe with this video I can break that number. kthx bye 🔪

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