Author Topic: Any knife makers here?  (Read 3922 times)

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Offline ChuckJ

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Any knife makers here?
« on: February 18, 2012, 02:29:13 PM »
My dad is trying to restore an old meat cleaver. He says he needs rivets for the handle that are 1" long, but he can't find any that long.

Anyone know of a supplier that might have them?
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Offline FreeBorn

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #1 on: February 18, 2012, 02:50:05 PM »
As a hobbyist blacksmith I've made my fair share but it's not my main interest, colonial period hardware and household stuff is more where I'm at. I make my own rivets for attaching the scales to the handle from copper wire and peen them cold. Most of the knives I forge are from railroad spikes and have no other handle material attached to them or I do a stacked leather handle on my KABAR copies.
There are an awful lot of talented bladesmiths over on iforgeiron.com where you can get a lot of info and sources for pre made cutler's rivets and how to use them.

Good luck.

http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/13-knife-making/


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Offline ChuckJ

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #2 on: February 18, 2012, 03:43:43 PM »
As a hobbyist blacksmith I've made my fair share but it's not my main interest, colonial period hardware and household stuff is more where I'm at. I make my own rivets for attaching the scales to the handle from copper wire and peen them cold. Most of the knives I forge are from railroad spikes and have no other handle material attached to them or I do a stacked leather handle on my KABAR copies.
There are an awful lot of talented bladesmiths over on iforgeiron.com where you can get a lot of info and sources for pre made cutler's rivets and how to use them.

Good luck.

http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/13-knife-making/

Thanks. I'll let him know.

How long have you been blacksmithing? I had never watched a blacksmith work until about 20 or so years ago at some colonial reenactment thing. There was a blacksmith there. All he was making was nails and I was still in awe. I amazed at what someone with a little talent and patience can beat out of a piece of metal.
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Offline obumazombie

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #3 on: February 18, 2012, 03:45:03 PM »
Thanks. I'll let him know.

How long have you been blacksmithing? I had never watched a blacksmith work until about 20 or so years ago at some colonial reenactment thing. There was a blacksmith there. All he was making was nails and I was still in awe. I amazed at what someone with a little talent and patience can beat out of a piece of metal.
Colonial Williamsburg ?
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Offline ChuckJ

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #4 on: February 18, 2012, 03:55:06 PM »
Colonial Williamsburg ?

In southeast Georgia. And come to think of it may not have been a colonial reenactment. It may have been antebellum or Civil War.
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Offline FreeBorn

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2012, 05:32:39 PM »
Thanks. I'll let him know.

How long have you been blacksmithing? I had never watched a blacksmith work until about 20 or so years ago at some colonial reenactment thing. There was a blacksmith there. All he was making was nails and I was still in awe. I amazed at what someone with a little talent and patience can beat out of a piece of metal.
Been smithing about seven years now. Like you I had seen it at reenactments and always thought it was intriguing. Each time I went to a historical site it seemed there would be a working blacksmith shop there. Fort Niagara, Fort Erie, Williamsburg, Monticello and a lot of other plantations across the south. I would always ditch the tour and spend the whole time in the smithy.
Finally I happened to almost trip over an anvil at a barn sale one day and bought it on the spot, that was in 2001. Information was scarce and hard to come by. Libraries in my area didn't have much on the subject either. Getting started was going pretty slow. Finally I happened to meet an old timer who did some horseshoeing. His horse turned up at my place one morning, was drinking out of the pool out in the yard so I clipped a dog leash onto his bridle and walked him home. I knew which farm he came from because I had seen him out in the corral there plenty of times, on the next road behind me. Our properties met at the back fence.
Turned out that the owner had been shoeing his own horses for over sixty years. That's what got me started, meeting someone who knew what they were doing. He showed me the basics like how to make tongs and punches/chisels and pointed me to another old timer he knew that sold me a firepot, some coal, a leg vice and a hand cranked blower so I could get my own smithy outfitted enough to get started.
That old farmer taught me how to turn a horseshoe, use a hoof gauge, trim a hoof, etc. etc. He got me to where I could trim his horses hoofs and properly shoe them by myself with him just watching, the percheron that liked to break the fence and wander around and his two halflingers too. That lasted about six months until I had had enough of my girlfriend at the time and Split. She had a gambling fetish and was spending money like shit through a goose and I got a Uhaul one day when I knew she was spending the whole day at her grandparent's. 85% of the contents of the house were mine so she basically came home to an empty house and a note on the counter next to her bag full of bingo gear. "Rent is paid for next month. You have 37 days left to get your ass out. Landlord has house on the market so expect him to be showing the place. Have a nice life". I heard through the grapevine that she quietly left without incident the next day, I assume to her grandparent's. She knew full well the local cop (one cop small town police dept) was my fishing buddy so I expected her to not trash the place.
I rented a farmhouse in the next county over and soon ran into a full time farrier in the local bar there. He also did some general blacksmithing and turned me onto the group "A.B.A.N.A.", the artist-blacksmith association of North America. I joined the local chapter, "local" being 70 miles away but I made it to about a year of monthly meetings before I quit attending because of the time and distance involved. I did learn a lot with those guys though, some very accomplished and highly talented people. I rode with the farrier on some weeknights and a Saturday now and then and learned a lot more about shoeing. Enough that I knew I didn't want to be a full time farrier. Never met a horse I didn't like but "horsie people" are a different breed entirely. No thanks. Most of them are fine folks but many are hard to put up with and difficult to please. One thing he told me that would likely offend most (his words, not mine) but I would have to agree with is this~ "these rich snobs like to treat you like the ni**er help and expect you to take peanuts for it". I do shoe some drafts for a few close friends but that's it. I find that those who keep drafts to be an entirely different class of people, salt of the earth types. Never met a draft horse owner I didn't like.
Draft horses also tend to be much more pleasant to be around than the Arabians, Thouroughbreds and warmbloods of the bluebloods. I have been bitten, pissed on, shit on, head butted and mashed against walls by these temperamental breeds. Shoeing is dangerous and I find that the temperament and personality of any given horse closely resembles that of their owners. Bitchy little 13 year old princess = bitchy whiny horse, predictable tantrum soon to follow.
I am much more happy to make things like Suffolk latches, hinges, candlesticks, andirons and fireplace sets as a hobby. If it got to be too much like work I probably wouldn't like it much anymore.


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Offline Eupher

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #6 on: February 23, 2012, 03:06:26 PM »
Great story, FB, even the part about the former gf!

As a kid, one of my fondest memories is of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI, and getting a horseshoe nail that had been formed into a ring. I think I remember them giving away the rings back then -- today they probably sell 'em for $5 a pop.

I don't know anything about horses, but I do know that draft horses are the gentle giants. And there is no better-looking horse than a Budweiser Clydesdale.
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Offline FreeBorn

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #7 on: February 23, 2012, 05:22:09 PM »
Great story, FB, even the part about the former gf!

As a kid, one of my fondest memories is of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI, and getting a horseshoe nail that had been formed into a ring. I think I remember them giving away the rings back then -- today they probably sell 'em for $5 a pop.

I don't know anything about horses, but I do know that draft horses are the gentle giants. And there is no better-looking horse than a Budweiser Clydesdale.
I give nail rings away for free to kids when I'm at the flea market in the summer. Very easy to make. Once they cool down to a black heat I hit them with a brass wire brush to give them a nice shiny patina.

I like the Clydes too. The Percheron the old farmer had was named Benjamin. Percherons can come in solid black to solid white and various shades of gray in between. Benny was a dapple gray like this one~



Benny had an insatiable fetish for orange/vanilla fudgesicles. I stopped over there one day with one in my hand as I got out of the car next to his fence. He snatched it clean away from me and left me there with a stripped fudgesicle stick in my hand. After that I always brought him one.

Budweiser is widely known for their wagon hitch of eight Clydesdales but originally of course every brewery had them. Some of the larger breweries had 250 or more horses for deliveries. Prohibition killed that off. Most breweries were using trucks by then but many found it actually more economical to keep using horses right up until prohibition. Some were put back into service during WWII because of rationing/fuel shortages. Budweiser had made the shift to truck deliveries and sold off all of their horses and wagons before prohibition. Upon repeal though August Busch Jr tracked down one of the wagons, had it restored and bought eight Clydes to go with it. He presented it as a gift to his father August Busch Sr in celebration of the repeal. Before that Budweiser used a mix of Percherons and Belgians like most other companies using draft horses being that they were the most common draft breeds. There weren't very many Clydesdales in the U.S. back then. Budweiser has been using them with great success ever since, they now have five wagons touring the country year round.

In my area Genesee is the prominent brewery having been in Rochester since 1878. Before prohibition ale actually outsold beer. In those days Genesee had 9 horse ale as their best selling product and their wagons were pulled by nine horse hitches, three sets of three abreast. All of the breweries took great pride in their horses and wagons and had magnificent stables to house them. They were kept in the highest state of polish at all times. Upon repeal in 1933 they introduced 12 horse ale, probably the same brew as nine horse but they upped the number of horses on each wagon to twelve, four sets of three abreast.

Genesee twelve horse hitch of Roan Belgians in front of the Genesee stables.


I don't know how many wagons Genesee had in service originally or after prohibition but I do know they used a variety of horses, some dapple grey Percherons, Some Roan Belgians and some Clydesdales but they would not be mixed within a hitch, each breed being kept separate so breeds varied from wagon to wagon with Genesee.

Genesee Clydesdales bar mirror.


12 horse ale was dropped from production by Genesee in 1979. I don't know when the wagon and 12 horse hitch was retired but it and all of the associated tack is preserved and well cared for at the Genesee Country Museum in Mumford, N.Y. Just this past year Genesee relaunched 12 horse ale.

http://www.irondequoitpost.com/latestnews/x663897611/Genesee-reintroduces-12-Horse-Ale-with-horse-drawn-delivery

I hope they have to good sense to resurrect the old wagon and put it back in service.

Original Genesee Brewery wagon on display with tack at the Genesee Country Vilage museum in Mumford


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesee_Country_Village_and_Museum

http://www.gcv.org/


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Offline Eupher

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Re: Any knife makers here?
« Reply #8 on: February 23, 2012, 08:14:34 PM »
Excellent rundown, FB! h5!

Mrs E used to work as a Coordinator at a living history museum, called the American West Heritage Center, located just outside Logan, UT. The commute was a bitch -- something like 89 miles one-way -- but she thoroughly enjoyed it till cutbacks forced her out.

It seems as though Genesee beer used to be a good one. I ain't so sure about today, though it's been a very long time since I've had one.

If nothing else, the adherence to tradition with the brewery wagons and horses and all is fascinating. One of these days we'll make to Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis and check out the Clydesdales. Magnificent animals.
Adams E2 Euphonium, built in 2017
Boosey & Co. Imperial Euphonium, built in 1941
Edwards B454 bass trombone, built 2012
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Mouthpiece data provided on request.