Fire Poker Video

Another of my basic videos.  You get to see the anvil, my belly, and what I'm making.  In this case, the fire poker from yesterday's post.

It isn't a really difficult project and nothing is especially critical in terms of measurements or design.  However, a good poker makes it so much easier to manage a fire in a wood stove or fireplace.

Not a Knife!

What?  This guy makes things on the anvil that are not blades?  I mean, arrowheads aren't knives, but they are arguably blades, right?

I'm still a novice smith.  I do it for fun and personal satisfaction.  And few things are as satisfying as making a useful tool.

We use a wood stove to heat our house as a secondary heat source.  There are times when we need to poke at the wood in the stove as it burns merrily.  Or not so merrily.  But we've used our ash shovel to do that for a long time.  Like 9 years.

Until today.

Took me a lot longer to make this than I expected, but it was satisfying.  I forged it out of about 13" of half-inch square bar.  Final length is about 18".  This is too short for a fireplace poker, but just about right for the wood stove.  

I took video of the project and once I finish editing it, I'll put it up here so both of my loyal readers can watch it.  Or not.  Very few people watch my YouTube channel.  Good thing I don't try to make money from it.  It is just a way to share with folks who may or may not be interested in the sorts of things I like to do.

Recent work

I've been ridiculously busy with school recently.  This blog has suffered, I'm afraid.

However, I have made a couple of things and now is my chance to share them.

 I had a friend over to make his first knife.  I normally make one along with someone who is doing it the first time.  That way I can demonstrate each step and then he/she can follow along and do the step just demonstrated.

Pictured above it the knife I made while he made his.  Nothing fancy or special, but it is a little larger than a lot of what I make.  I rather like it, actually.  I may end up putting it in my spoon carving tool kit.

When I first started blade smithing, this was the knife I wanted to make.  I just love knives that show the whole story in one piece of steel.  They are less comfortable and less practical than knives with proper handles, but they just look cool.  I made these one day when I had time to hammer out a couple of blades.  Still need to put a final edge on them and find them homes.

These particular one-piece knives are often called Viking knives.  The claim is that these were common (some seem to think ubiquitous) to Vikings.

Now, I'm not an archaeologist, and I am not an expert on Viking artifacts or material culture, but I've never once seen evidence of this sort of knife in an actual Viking context. I've seen a couple of pictures supposed to be from Novgorod that depict knives with integral handles sort of like these, but not very many.

The issue is that if I made blades with normal tangs that would fit into wood handles, I could make two blades from the steel in each of these knives.  Steel was a fairly valuable and relatively scarce commodity in the dark ages.  Heck, right up until the Industrial Revolution, actually.  I just can't see very many smiths making a blade that is less useful that consumes twice the resources when he could make two blades that would fit wood handles with the same amount of steel.

So, I don't think they are very historical, but I do know they are a lot of fun.