Making NW Coast Style Crooked Knife

To start off December, I attended a two-day class on making Tlinget crooked knives.

Robert Shaw and James Williams conducted the sessions in which we learned to take a strip of O-1 steel through the complete process to make two finished crooked knives.

We profiled the blades and ground the taper on bench grinder with 36 grit stone.   Secondly, A taper on the length of the blade was ground.

The final shape, a triangle in cross-section, was completed again on the bench grinder with painstakingly repetative passes.

Before hardening, all grinder marks were removed with sandpaper, rubbing manually with 80 grit down to 600 grit.

Next, holding the blade in vise grips, two propane torches were used to get the blade cherry red where we wanted the bend and quickly bent them on a piece of fire brick.

 

When satisfied with shape, the whole blade was brought to critical temp and quenched in clean motor oil to harden.

All the black slag and carbon was polished off, by hand again ;o)  and we were ready to draw the temper and make the blade a bit softer.   Bob suggested we take these blades just to straw or perhaps bronze but not further.    A brief demo showed it was not difficult but required a sensitive application of heat, since we were only bringing the metal to 400 degrees.

Hafting the blade involved carving an appropriately sized hunk of yellow cedar, or in my case, mahogany.  Cutting a recess for the blade and either glue, rivet, or screw the blade in place.  Optionally, adding a wrap of twine to support the blade was done.

My knives in process of finishing

James and Robert had a nice collection of knives to draw inspiration from:

OK here are my finished knives.. James told me the straight one with the edge on the straight was a white man's grind ...haha...so I did one with the edge on curve to satisfy both worlds ;o)  I'm very happy with them and will be making more soon.

The rest of my carving knives...and a Kestrel adze that I hafted with an alder branch and rawhide.

addendum:   OK, I got all excited and bought a couple of self igniting trigger valves for propane/mapp gas and proceeded to cut up an old Kromedge saw blade for material with my side grinder. 

I made a couple more crooked knives and was very happy with result.  The process is not difficult or particularly time-consuming, and saves me 75 bucks each knife -- at least, that's the current price for a Kestrel knife.