Steel! What's in your pocket?

[Tant01]

I wear a fixed blade on my belt at work, it's a basic farm tool. It also happens to be a custom mini Bowie style made out of a file. ANZA KNIVES makes all of his blades from files.

http://www.anzaknives.com/

http://www.anzaknives.com/register/register.html

(Free Anza Knife drawing )


I figure since they gave me a knife last May (04) I might as well let other interested folks know about them if they don't already. Don't confuse this with SPAM. I am not associated with ANZA KNIVES other than I like the one they sent me. The decorative "anzacus" personalization wore off the blade rapidly but I can't say the same for it's edge. The thing is still sharp. I tend it with the steel hone once in a while (daily depending on use) but I've never had to actually sharpen it yet. It is carbon steel so it needs to stay clean to prevent corrosion. (Or maintained as any other tool)

Go ahead and ask if I use it! LOL I've used it to dig in the soil. (THAT WILL kill the edge on many blades!) I've used it to open bags of concrete... Okay I was ballisticly stabbing the bags and cutting deep just for fun. THAT will wear the edge off even good knives FAST! I've used it to sharpen other knives! That might border on abuse because a knife IS NOT meant to cut steel off other knives... Is it?

I carry it so much you might say it was my EDC but I don't carry it unless I'm "working". (fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, etc) I find myself reaching for it when it's not there. I almost feel naked without it. Not really but when it's not there I miss it. SO...

How often do you practice, drill, rehearse or simulate deploying your EDC? What about your backup weapon? My real EDC is a backup weapon but I usually reach for my belt... I need to work on my backup deployment maybe?


I've drilled it before. The tiny little (1 1/8 inch blade) handforged karambit is a nice tool. :::Cough, Craig Camerer Custom knives ::: 1/4 inch thick D2 tool steel. I like it and carry this every day.
The cutting limitation of the blade doesn't bother me, so don't even go there. It's not the size of my tool that you should fear! LOL
:::too many smilies:::

What I need to do is attach a small length of cord or chain to the sheath so I don't need to remove the plastic (Kydex) from the blade with my opposite hand. It can fit the Tec Lock clips but I don't like the extra bulk or having it on my belt...

Maybe the wife will let me use one of her safety pins! LOL


Good day.

[Garland]

I want a Spyderco gunting for christmas....maybe just the trainer...
but, right now, I carry around cheapies.

[HtTKar]

I want a Spyderco gunting for christmas

"You'll poke your eye out kid"




jk

[Garland]

...not MY eye.

[Tant01]

I carry a CRKT Desert Cruiser and a Sig Sauer 226 in .40 S&W. Train with both all the time - knife work three times a week and range work for my job and on my own three times a week.

Sweet! I like the .40 s&w and the Sig is a true gentlemans piece.

[Tant01]

I have a variety of rimfires at my disposal right now. I wouldn't mind having a "real" gun but I must also consider the neighbors within range of my mini-mag ammo. Drywall and minimal distance between triplex townhouses...

Funny thing about rimfires, they might have the lowest one shot kill stats but they kill more people that all other calibers combined... Go figure. Might be that 70 odd gazillion of them have been produced and they outnumber all other guns (don't quote me on that)

[BoarSpear]

sig 226 9mm (easier to "find") loaded with black talons alternated with hydrashoks..... mossberg mbl 500 (is there any other? ) fer "homeland security" i keep a masters of defense pointman in the left front pocket for edc and a couple nealy fixed blades handle down on each side as well...

[BoarSpear]

very true i missed the home defence part...9mm is not good for home defense i was totally talking about edc weapon and loads...and mikes right glasers come apart too easy...no amount of specialty ammo or bigger calibers make up for poor placement of rounds though...for in the house i have several cold steel battle maces in strategic locations and cold steel's covert action tanto's in the showers...

funny story....about 15 years ago i lived in an apt complex that was having a rash of burglaries...they would kick in the door and empty your apt into a truck and vamoos...i had all sorts of swords, bo, hanbo, axes etc on the walls. i came home to find the sherriffs dept putting tape over my door and my neighbors...only my apt was like i left it, except for the busted door....the sheriff looked in my apt and laughed...he was like "i dont blame em i wouldnt wanna risk getting caught in that apt either!"

[Tant01]

According to the Wild West Tech (History Channel), the process of making knives from worn out files goes way back to the Wild Wild West.

Anyways, I like the look of a lot of those knives.

That is probably more of a myth than anything else. Not saying it didn't happen but it wasn't too smart to use a 4.00 file to make 1.00 dollar blade. They would more likely be sharpened and reused as a file.


Anza has a monthly drawing for a free knife! Just sign up! You might be the only guy to try this month? (Might not...)

http://www.anzaknives.com/register/register.html

[BoarSpear]

Anza has a monthly drawing for a free knife! Just sign up! You might be the only guy to try this month? (Might not...)

http://www.anzaknives.com/register/register.html

hey i damn sure aint gonna be the only one if you keep tellin people about it

[Tant01]

Maybe.... Not?

...I would bet that smart and industrious old westerners would have had the horse sense to make a good knife out of a worn out old file. You get twice the mileage out of the tool, and it more than pays for itself in the end. Knives are still about the most important aspects of anyone's tool kit, whether for daily work or wilderness survival. And from personal experience, making a file into a knife is a hell of a lot easier than making an old worn out file into a new useful file any day.

Partly right...


The Sandbar Fight;
The first knife Bowie became famous with was allegedly designed by his brother Rezin in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana and smithed by a blacksmith named Jesse Cleft out of an old file.


The Bowie Mystique:
Bowie lived so long ago that the distance of time renders the contradictions and confusion about him almost impenetrable, and his reputation, evidently even in his own day, precipitated the creation of a historical petri dish in which the culture of The Adventurer grew and flourished. He became a legend so early in American history that the records are congealed with invention, fiction and fantasy, creating nearly insurmountable obstacles to the human features behind the mystique, if not clogging access to the man altogether. The results of his existence have become so profound they're almost intangible...

FACTS and FANTASIES about FILE KNIVES


by Bernard Levine (c)1998; for Knives 99


In the 1840s, with a considerable effort of heating, hammering and grinding, a person could have converted an old file into a knife blade. And with a similar effort of heating, hammering, and grinding, a person could have converted a silver teapot into a doorstop. The question is: why would anyone back then have done such a wasteful and impractical thing?

A persistent popular legend, one that possibly dates back more than a hundred years, maintains that in "the old days," people made knives from old files. The strength of this legend has prompted many an amateur knifemaker to attempt making knives from old files, with varying degrees of success. It has prompted novelists, journalists, romantic knife fanciers, and other fiction writers to invent historical scenes of famous old knives, such as the bowie knife, being forged from old files. It even prompted an entrepreneur in Havana, Illinois, in 1906 to name his butcher knife firm the "Old File Cutlery Company;" this successful firm continued in business for six decades -- not once in all those years actually selling a knife made from a file.

When knives, saws, and files were all hand-made, saws and files were much more difficult and time-consuming to make than plain knives, and therefore they were more valuable.

[Tant01]

What I'm trying to say, Tant, is that I've done it myself, using the same bellows and forge setup that they had in the early 1800's. It's not that hard. ....
Look at it this way:

The author himself says that files were much harder to make than knives, right? So when a file was worn out and useless, what would have been easier for the frontiersman to do? Remake the file (very tough, especially after it's been tempered), or heat it up and bang it into a knife? I have no trouble buying that plenty of people made file knives because I have done it myself, and it's not hard at all. ....

And as far as knives being less valuable? Find a file that costs you $150.

Hey Mike. I'm not saying that it didnt happen (again). I have also used annealed file's to make blades (draw blades) What I'm TRYING to say is that this is more of a modern legend (FOLKLORE) than fact. It is easier to sharpen an old used file than it is to make a new one by hand. A file had many many more uses than a knife and was a more valuable tool.

In the mid 1800 you could buy a brand new gun for 15.00 dollars! A knife cost about a dollar while a tool like a file might cost 5 dollars...It was just not as common as we are led to think it was. Now, using a file to make a knife out of some other chunk of scrap steel was probably MUCH MORE common. It's called stock removal method as opposed to forging the shape with heat and hammer.

Ever try to anneal a modern tool steel like A2 or D2? It's air hardened so if you take it out of the heat it tempers itself! The only way to make it soft enough (for stock removal) is to let it cool at a really slow rate. This steel doesn't need to be quenched in a liquid at all to harden. Forging tool steel is no easy task. I'm impressed! How many cracked, broke or warped before you actually made a blade? No fair, your dad is a pro...

http://pweb.netcom.com/~brlevine/filestory.htm

[Tant01]

I broke two before getting it right - a big rasp file and a smaller bastard file. I hypothesized that they earned that name after someone tried to make a knife out of one...

I know a lot of frontiersmen made knives from scrap saw blades, especially those used in larger mills. Once those blades broke, they were all but useless to the mills, and the steel was very, very good quality. .....

Indeed. I have used old farm equipment steel and saw blades to make functional (read RUSTIC) knives. Some of the knives I have are made from L-6 steel commonly found in used saw blades...

[Tant01]

How would one go about sharpening a file with the crude technology available to Wild West blacksmiths?

Lets just take a look at how they were made Circa 1850...

Excerpts from "A Day at the Fitzalan Steel and File-Works,
Sheffield," The Penny Magazine Supplement, Volume XIII, March
1844, pages 121-128.

"... we have been favored with access to the Fitzalan Steel-
Works of Messrs. Marriott and Atkinson, which besides exhibiting
the various processes of steel-making... file manufacture (one of
the most important in which steel is employed) is there conducted
on a large scale.

"These tools, simple and unimportant as they may seem... to
those who never enter an artisan's workshop, are among the most
note-worthy articles made of steel. They are the working-tools by
which every other kind of working-tool is in some degree
fashioned. Whether a man is making a watch or a steam-engine, a
knife or a plough, a pin or a coach, he would be brought to a
stand if he had not files at his command. It may be a file with a
hundred serrations to an inch, or with six or eight; it may have
straight cuts like most files, or angular holes like a rasp; it
may be two inches long, or a yard long; it may be round, or half-
round, or triangular, or square, or flat; blunt or pointed,
straight or curved; but a file of some sort or other will be
found in almost every workshop.

"The first place to which we have to follow the file-makers is
the forge... There is on one side a forge-fire, with a hearth on
which to place the fuel, and bellows placed behind, much in the
same way as a common smith's forge, but with more attention to
neatness and order. The workman's bench... is a large block of
hard stone, weighing about three tons... On this are fixed one or
more anvils... There are also hammers of various sizes and
peculiar shapes, and other small implements necessary to the
operation...

"Except for the smallest files, there are two men employed at
each forge -- a striker and a forger, one of whom manages the
fire, heats the steel, and acts as a general assistant; while the
other is the superior workman, who hammers the file into shape,
and is responsible for its quality. There are various notches,
ridges, curvatures, and gauges, on and about his small steel
anvils, which enable him to work the piece of steel into the
proper form for a file, including the narrow handle, or 'tang.'
The rate of working is such, that at the whole of the sixteen
'hearths,' about fifty thousand dozens of files are made in a
year. Each man accustoms himself to the making of one particular
size of file... From the thickness and softness of the heated
metal, there is very little rebound to the hammer, and this
renders the work of the striker rather laborious, especially for
large files, where a hammer of nearly twenty pounds weight is
used.
"The files are then annealed or 'lighted,' in order to bring
the steel to a state of softness fitted for the cutting of
teeth... Next succeeds the process of grinding, where the...
'blanks' are ground down to a true and regular surface, whether
that be flat or curved...

"Then ensues the very important and curious operation of
cutting the files, one which has hitherto defied the powers of
machinery... In one of the buildings of the works is a long room
in which file-cutters are ranged around the sides in front of the
windows... each one having a small bench before him with a simple
apparatus for fastening down the file while being cut...

"The file being slightly strapped down, the cutter takes a
sharp tool or chisel in the left hand and a hammer in the right.
This tool is a very hard, sharp, and tough piece of steel, having
an edged fitted to produce the required kind of tooth, and a head
to receive the blow of the hammer.
"The hammers employed (the heaviest of which weigh about nine
pounds each) have the handles placed... at such an angle that the
cutter can, while making the blow, pull the hammer in some degree
towards him, and thus give a peculiarity to the shape of the
tooth. If the file is a flat one... the cutter places the small
steel tool on it at a particular angle, and with one hammer blow
cuts an indentation. He then, by a minute and almost
imperceptible movement, changes the place of the tool, and makes
another cut parallel to, and a short distance from, the first;
then a third, a fourth, and so on to the end of the file,
shifting the file slightly in its fastening as he proceeds.
Generally the file is cut doubly, one set of cuts crossing the
other at an angle... In this case he reverses the position in
which he holds the cutting tool, and proceeds as before. If the
file be round or half-round, or have a curved surface of any
kind, he still uses a straight-edged cutting tool; but as this
can only make a short indentation, he has to go round the file by
degrees, making several rows or ranges of cuts contiguous one to
another.
"Such is the art of file-cutting; and it contains many points
worthy of remark. First, the angle at which the cuts are made
depends greatly on the purpose to which the file is to be
applied... Next, the cut is not a mere indentation... it is a
triangular groove of particular shape... The strict parallelism
of the several cuts can only be brought about by practised
accuracy of hand and eye, since there is no guide, gauge, or
other contrivance for regulating the distance... As an instance
of what skill and long practice can effect in this respect, we
have before us a file about ten inches long... The flat side is
cut with a hundred and twenty teeth to the inch, so that there
are about twelve hundred teeth on that side; the round side has
such an extent of curvature, that it required eighteen rows of
cuts to compass it; each little cut on this side is not much
above a twentieth of an inch in length; and the number is thus so
great, that for the whole file there are twenty-two thousand
cuts, each made with a separate blow of the hammer, and the
cutting tool being shifted after each blow! ...the whole of the
files made at Sheffield (the headquarters of the trade) are cut
by hand...
"When the files are cut, they are brought into the warehouse to
be stamped with the corporate mark of the firm. They are next
hardened... the proper working of the file depends a good deal on
the manner in which it is done... and while yet warm is
straightened by a small apparatus at hand...

"The files are then scrubbed clean by women with sand and
water; and lastly pass into the hands of the foreman, who tests
every file singly in a way which brings both the hearing and the
touch into exercise... A firm which has once acquired a
reputation for good files is extremely solicitous not to damage
it by the sale of even one that is defective."

http://pweb.netcom.com/~brlevine/filemak.txt