The Spanish Dirk is probally one of the most copied and varied knives in history. Some folks say they do not like them cause they look like a kitchen knife. Yes, this is where kitchen knives came from, Dirks. Cause they work so well and can have slight changes made here and there that can be tailored to specific tasks when required. The Spanish Dirk is the fore runner of our American Bowie knife as well. It can be simple or dressed up. My two favorite designs are the Dirk and the Southwest Bowie.
1. I actually started this billet out with 7 pieces. Welded a handle on it, and tack welded these pieces together.
2. Here I have made my first weld then folded over so I can make the second weld. We started out with 7 pieces, one fold and weld it gives us 14 layer count, next fold would give us 28, then to 56, 112, 224 which is what this one ended up as. Each fold doubles your count. Each time you draw it out so you can get a decent length for a new fold then repeat the first step making sure you stay nice and clean with it all. One piece of trash and this is history and sometimes you do not find the bad spot till near the end of grinding.
3. I drew it out to 224 count, then forged to to a basic hex shape, here I am putting it in a die I made so that I get a smooth 1 inch dia. This will give me an ample bolster to play with. I will lose a little bit of the diamter when forging the blade to shape but we will try not to lose anymore than we have to.
4. It is now out of the dies with a poor focus. Thats me all right. At least is is round now. As you can see it is still red when this was shot. Got a bit hot up there for the focus, guess I am just too much of a wennie to stand up there close and get a good shot. Next step will be rough forging the blade shape then setting the pattern.
#5. Here I have forged the blade from the round to a blade shape and am beginning to forge in the Bull Pine pattern into the damascus.
#6. This photo shows entire pattern forged in and the blade forged to shape.
#7. Here I have ground off the top of the pattern and have rough ground the blade. I have also set the tang thickness. As you can see I also have carved a "spanish notch" in the back of the choil. Some of the old ones had it and some did not. I put a 30 second flash etch on it just so I can see the pattern for when I go in and hand sand the darker etch lines will show up where I need to sand harder. While grinding on the blade I burned out the bearings in the grinding attachment so I will have to order some in. The blade thickness coming off the the ricasso is 1/4". It feels and looks lighter than that but that is due to it being intergal. Once I get it sanded down then I will heat treat, draw the temper, clean the blade up then rough fit the handle.
Always ask the maker if the tang is one piece with the blade. Some makers of intergals drill and tap a piece of allthread into the back of the ricasso and lets that serve as the tang. I end up putting a "octagon" grind on my intergal tangs. I do not line round tangs. The 8 sided grind just helps both strength and prevents any turning or slippage in dire usage.
#8. Ok. It will be a maybe a week before the intergal grinder is back up and running. Seems as those are really hard to find bearings. So, in my spare time I thought I would take the tail end of the billet that we forged to about 7/8 inch diameter and choke it down to about 5/8 inch for a smaller dirk to grind up when the grinder is back up and running. This is a lesson that pops up on occasions. Don't hammer too long too cold. Old blacksmiths in this area used to have an old saying. "You go to hell for beating cold iron". Well, I can't argue with that much. When you hammer on damascus too cold you get a split such as shown here. Sometimes it is possible to go back on it and reweld it. Sometimes like this one it is probally not going to take and you just throw it away and dont worry about that day you put in making the steel.
Thats what you are seeing here. A flaw that I put in it by not watching close enough. These things do happen. Just thought I would let you see that not all of them turn out the way you want and that we all make mistakes. I finally had it down to the right diameter that I wanted, just hit on it a little too long. I will try and reweld it tomorrow and see what happens. [This portion of the billet shall be known as Dirk #2]
This is Dirk #2 of the remains of the above billet.
I ground the tops of the bad spot so I could see exactly how and where the flaw ran. I went in and very gently rewelded it by hand 3 times. Cleaned it back up on the grinder and saw that I had got it rewelded just fine. So from there I cut a basic ladder pattern in across the damascus and forged it to shape so that is what you are seeing now. I put a flash etch on it just so you can get an idea of the pattern. I forged down the tang and did the heat treating and tempering of it. I cannot do the finish etch as the handle will have to be fitted and polished at the same time as the ricasso so that we get a perfect fit. I will fit the butt cap as well at the same time. If I plan on engraving the butt cap I will remove it once all is finished and engrave it then do the finish etch on the blade and nail it all together. I thought I would throw in an overview of what this knife will be going through in its construction. Its progressive photos will simply be Dirk #2
While we are talking about rewelding and such on #2, when you have it up to welding temperature and bring it out of the fire you have to have all of your game plan together when you reach for the billet. Once you bring it out of the fire if you wait as much as 3 seconds you have lost your window of time for welding. You must go quickly to the anvil and "strike while the iron is hot". If you miss that time frame two times you will have let oxidation get into the crack and it will never weld then. You also cannot strike too hard with the hammer as the two pieces that you are wanting to weld and "stick" will simply bounce off of each other. You have to use quick and measured blows with the hammer for it to weld. On a relative small diameter piece such as this you cannot lay it on the anvil and then strike it as the anvil will suck the welding temperature away before you can get it to weld. On another small note of education in case you did not know it. I am a Bladesmith. The word "smith" is derived from the old word "smite", so you have a bladesmith that strikes or smites blades, goldsmith smites gold etc etc. This is also why the sur name of Smith is so popular. It is derived from people who did smith work years ago.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, in the winter time I often have to "warm" my anvil up by heating a few large bars of steel and laying on the anvil so it does not suck away the heat too fast. With #2 and this time of year you just make sure the small billet and the hammer hits the anvil at the very same time. All under two seconds and dont miss.
Dirk #2
Here I have drilled and slotted out the stag for this blade. I thought that a nice stag handle with engraved pommel would look nice. I still have to fit up the stag to blade section then prepare for the pommel and dome it over. I will have to perfect fit and polish the stag/blade fit before etching. If you etched first then you would have to sand and polish it off to get the handle fit right to fit then finish. I worked on this while the steel was cooling on the W pattern Sendero.
Dirk #2
On the left the pommel is shown right after the hard soldering. Hard soldering is done at 1200
degrees F. It is also called Silver Brazing. I use Silverloy. It has the same tensil strength as a 7018 welding rod on metal. Really tough. When I engrave the pommels I do not set up the pommel to be screwed onto the tang as I would scar it up putting it back on. I will split this piece of bolt so that it goes on either side of the tang.
On the right hand picture it is shown where the pommel is now finish sanded and polished. It will be removed so I can now start engraving it.
Dirk #2
Shown is a rough picture of it just slid together for the photo and right before I had acutally started working on the pommel but I thought you would want to take a look at what it basically will look like.
Once I am through with the engraving I will post the finished picture on the regular Micro show site button. Now it is on to the main line Dirk.
Back to the orginial Dirk.
The photo belows shows the blade unetched and with rough fitting the handle. I will continue to finish out the handle and the blade together so the fit is as good as I can make it. I will also make and fit up the butt cap during the finish process. At that point, I will take it all back apart, etch and engrave. This photo is to give you a rough idea of what the finished piece will look like. I am using an antique piece of elephant ivory. From the ricasso to the point this blade measures approx 10 1/4 inch long.
Now we have it with a fit and polished handle. I attached the butt cap the way I do all of my engraved butt cap pieces. [Refer to Dirk #2.] Like most handles of this sort I had to go back and forth to the grinder and buffer probally 12-14 times when I overlooked a scratch. On this piece I used an antique piece of Elephant ivory and it shows the center as well with the lighter streak on the side of the handle. Elephant ivory has pattern where Walrus does not have so look for the pattern lines. I am ready to put the edge on now and hand sand the blade. I have a slight low spot on the blade that shows dark here, when I go to the grinder to put the edge on I will make sure I take it out before hand sanding. I heat treat at 120 grit, then jump to 320 so I can see any dark line that might still show from 120. I then hand sand to 220, then jump to 400. This is as clean as I can make them. This is a nice representation of a Spanish Dirk in my opinion. I have never made one like this and am going to try something different with the engraving on the butt end.
I will show it etched next then will start the engraving process.
My light box is out of whack and this is the best I can do. I was going to shoot this and then the whole blade etched but could only do this one rough shot. There is a lot of engraving to do around it etc. Will keep you posted while working.
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