knife making

[Pete Grey]

I’ve done some reading up and yes MB fine silica sand is good, and isn't limestone used as a flux in blast furnaces ?, ground up mud i’ve never heard of but we learn a little every day.

[Pete Grey]

I know this thread is knife making and we have also discussed fire welding and other uses of a forge and heat treatment as a useful survival skill.

But if TSHTF it could be to late to forge blades or any other weapon/item you may need.

So do it now, while you have electricity and coke or propane are readily available, and you have the time.

If you don’t think you have the skills nesessary please have a go, you may surprise yourself.

[Mortblanc]

Besides my hobby work I always viewed blacksmithing as a trade necessary in any basic society.

You are correct that any personal tools needed should be made or purchased now, but there are certain things that one might need that only a blacksmith could furnish.

In all primitive societies there has been the need for a large knife as a tool. Each society had one that was peculiar to their environment and culture. In Central and South America is was/is the machete, in other regions it might be the copicing knife, in another it might be a large Puko or Sax.

While I can purchase any edged tool I need you folks over there are rapidly losing that ability, and in only a few years those items will only be available through a local source that has retained the ability to forge and heat treat metal in a SHTF situation.

Add to that the meed for tools and items used for a self sustaining life that no one sees the need to own in this day and time. We may well never need them, but if we ever do they will not be "off the shelf items".

One day I was sitting in the museum blacksmith shop contemplating a piece of farm equipment that had just been donated to the tool display, which was extensive. I knew it was a horse drawn implement but did not know its use or how to operate it. I asked around and could find no one on the staff or in the community that knew how to use it or what it was.

I left it to sit outside the door of the forge and after about a week a tour buss rolled up to unload its contents, which was a group of senior citizens. I discovered the name, use and operational instructions for that machine from an 87 year old man on that tour buss.

It occurred to me that the item in question could have been dropped into ancient Egypt in 3000bc, or into any country world wide in 1930, and most of the population would have known what it was.

We had lost almost 5000 years of technology in two generations.

I decided to learn part of it back at that point, just due to my historical interest, and the fact that I wanted to make some righteous blades!

I was deep into historic reenactment back then and I could not afford other peoples hand forged blades.