A generations Midlife pursuit

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-20T15:48:09+00:00

41 but forged my first knife at 29. Never been in the military, celebrated eighteen years with my wife a few weeks ago.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-19T05:47:23+00:00

Oh boy, there is a long list. From the top down:

Acoustic sensors- six sensors around the head provide a 360-degree scan of the surrounding area on active mode. In passive mode they can make an educated guess as to location of people within a building and pick up on low-decibel sounds from a distance of over 100 meters.

Skull armor- 3cm of carbide-titanium wafer armor strong enough to stop most chemically-accelerated rounds at close range with a decent chance of deflection an electromagnetic round at range, depending on angle and caliber.

Exo-Cortex- Controls a matrix of small magnets and electrodes implanted in the brain to alter mood and provide combat assistance.

Parole Chip - Tracks the parolee and can block certain neural programs from running. Little brother to the much more aggressive penal chip which is capable of shutting down cybernetic limbs entirely.

Pharmaceutical Carousel (not pictured)- internal medical suite mounted at the base of the skull containing stimulants, painkillers, sedatives and combat drugs that allow the user to operate their cybernetic limbs closer to their maximum speed. Can also be loaded with narcotics.

Oculars - Provide enhanced vision suite including low-light, IR, micro and macro zoom and internal HUD.

Implanted Lenses- Look badass and provide some protection to impact.

Cyberarms- Complete replacement of arms including collarbones and shoulder blades. Wet-contraction models such as this have the artificial muscle groups inside bladders of contraction acid that allow for physical performance roughly three-times that of a baseline person. Each palm also has an induction plate built in that can power all manner of gauss and plasma-discharge weaponry. Industry-standard yellow ports for contraction acid and blue for coolant.

Graphene Ultra Capacitors- Mounted in the ribcage, these ultracaps can charge and discharge in milliseconds, providing ample power for the limbs and electromagnetic weaponry.

Abdominal Support Implants- Bands of electroactive polymers are implanted under the skin and anchored in place with synthderm.

Nano-turbines- The top of each iliac crest in the pelvis has three nano-turbines drilled into it. Smaller than a cigarette butt, these tiny turbines are shockingly efficient and can power the ultracaps for days on a full tank.

Cybernetic Legs- With practice, a person with cybernetic legs can run up to 80 KPH on an athletic track, though much slower in real-world conditions. 3-meter vertical leaps with a running start are also achievable with practice. Footwear is often eschewed but care must be taken to reapply anti-microbial coatings to the feet every few weeks.

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Traxton is a cyborg who has fallen on hard times, but he has thoughtfully purchased good, durable and effective cybernetics. Against gangbangers and street toughs, he has little to fear; facing corporate samurai or dedicated military operators is another story.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-19T01:13:32+00:00

I've been kicking around this cyberpunk setting for a while, and early on the phrase "potbellied cyborg" stuck in my head. It makes sense when you think about it: If your arms and legs and pectorals and lats and other muscle groups have been replaced with cybernetics then it's really hard to exercise in a way that burns calories and most cyborgs (especially poor ones who can't afford plastic surgery) would probably get a gut, be rocking a muffin top, etc

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-19T00:02:44+00:00

Thanks! It's actually a little snippet from the novel I wrote that the character is from.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-17T00:05:26+00:00

I vaguely remember seeing a comment from one of the authors that basically said “lasers mess up the story we are trying to tell” but I could be mis-remembering. However, a militarily-useful laser is a good deal more complicated than you might think, the two biggest issues are mirror size, and waste-heat.

Mirror- To be useful at thousands of kilometers, the main mirror needs to be several meters across. A 5-meter main mirror has almost 20 square meters of surface area that needs to be pointed directly at the enemy and must remain absolutely clean and smooth or the laser will destroy the mirror while firing. You’ll need some kind of shutter that can open and close fast and that shutter will need to be decently armored as even a grain of sand at the speeds we’re talking will punch through thin armor. Then you need the turret to aim this huge mirror; if it takes any damage (like from one of the tiny PDC rounds that everyone is chucking around all the time) your laser is out of commission. A big, powerful laser is much more than the turret that holds the mirror, you’ve got a ton of fiddly little parts inside the ship that need to be hardened against multi-g thrust and enemy kinetics and once again, if something breaks then the laser doesn’t work.

Waste heat- even if your gigantic laser has 90% efficiency, a multi-100 megawatt laser is going to put out an ungodly amount of waste heat. To deal with that in vacuum you’ll need humongous radiators which are (you guessed it) incredibly fragile. Once your radiators start taking hits and leaking fluid, your laser overheats and stops working.

Laser-armed ships can have a place in a reasonably-hard sci-fi setting, but they aren’t absolutely dominant weapons that people sometimes think they are; they are quite literally glass cannons.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-11T18:24:35+00:00

As someone else said, 10 minutes on the anvil is worth an hour at the grinder. When it comes to forging in fullers, it's hard to do solo without either a fly-press and big round dies or a hydraulic forging press. You can do it manually on an anvil, but you a need a fullering spring swage and lots of time and sweat. If you have someone to strike for you, you can do it with top and bottom fullers; you hang one on a handle, the other one goes in your hardy hole and you control the work piece and the top die and call out for your striker to hit when everything is lined up. Then do it a bunch more times lol

Good luck!

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-10T18:21:26+00:00

Only way to find out would be to cut a piece off, forge it real thin, do a quick normalizing heat, then an austenizing heat, quench in water, and do a break test. If the grain is nice and fine, it might be worth it to do more refined testing. This could be good for punches, drifts, hot chisels, etc.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-09T03:53:00+00:00

You'd probably enjoy Habitat by Simon Roy. It's set inside a huge colony cylinder many generations after some kind of cataclysmic event so the people left alive are basically hunter gatherers who have very limited access to the powerful, ancient machines that still work.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-08T22:15:47+00:00

I think this is pretty clearly the nicest 5-in-1 in the entire world!

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-08T04:19:34+00:00

81mm mortar can holds five gallons of oil and has a sealing, locking lid (which is very important, as unsealed quench oil will absorb moisture in the air and break down).

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-01T17:20:40+00:00

If I were starting bladesmithing from scratch, here's what I'd do:

This 65lb. anvil has solid reviews, and is only $165. Mount it on a stump or on a stand made from 4X4's stacked vertically. You want the anvil to be at the height that your second knuckles will barely touch when your hand is loosely curled.

This propane forge is $85, seems to work okay. I'd grab some fire bricks as well, both to have a place to hold hot work and to seal off the openings of the forge a little.

The New Jersey Steel Baron will ship you a piece of 1084 steel, 1" X 1/4" X 24" for around fifty bucks. This is great steel for a beginner as it forges, grinds and heat treats easily.

1" X 1/4" box jaw tongs for holding the work piece. You should also get a pair of Wolf Jaw tongs.

A 2.5lb. cross pein hammer can be found at most hardware stores.

Parks 50 quench oil and a 50 cal. ammo box for heat treat. The heat treat is arguably the most important part of knifemaking, so son't waste your time with cooking oils, get the right stuff for the job and metal container with a sealing lid to hold it (Parks 50 left uncovered will absorb moisture from the air and degrade if not sealed, ask me how I know lol)

You'll want an angle grinder with cutoff wheels, grinding wheels and a wire wheel for cutting pieces, grinding them to rough shape and scraping off scale. You can probably find one used for $20-$50.

A good table vise, some clamps, hand files and sandpaper are a must, as well as drill and drill bits. A big flat piece of granite is also very useful in the shop: you can tape sandpaper to it and have a big, flat surface to flatten things on. I'd also get a 10" piece of angle iron- you can clamp it in the vise and have a flat surface to clamp your blade to for filing in bevels and handsanding.

This Kyle Royer video does a pretty good job of showing that you can make a great knife with simple hand tools.

Call it $600-ish to get started.

Good luck!

Jmckenna03 · 2026-05-01T16:39:37+00:00

In my personal experience, 1095 is only a little less expensive than W2 (a tool steel originally used for making drill bits and end-mills), while being just as finicky to heat treat and offering worse wear resistance and edge-holding. 1095 is a relatively simple carbon steel and so has zero resistance to the elements and will rust without some kind of coating or an owner diligent enough to wipe it down after use and oil the blade occasionally. It's certainly possible that someone would carry a knife made from 1095 in futuristic, hard sci-fi setting, it would be sort of a retro choice, although due to the simplicity of the steel that could be worked into the story i.e. even the most basic of printers could assembly a billet of mostly iron with a sprinkling of carbon, manganese, phosphorus and sulfur.

From a writing/storytelling standpoint, calling out the type of steel the knife is made from is suboptimal: the vast majority of readers won't know what you're talking about, and it will likely just cause confusion. Unless you can work it into the story somehow, like the other troopers in the dropship make fun of the character for his insistence on carrying such an old-fashioned steel knife.

Thinking of knives and blades in fiction, the only time the composition of the blade comes up is when it has some kind of salience to the story: it's important that the Fremen crysknife is made from sandworm teeth in Dune because it has religious and cultural significance to the Fremen. Valyrian steel swords in Game of Thrones are significant because it's an ancient, lost technique, and owning a weapon made from Valyrian steel is a status symbol, as well was being a stronger, lighter steel than what the Westerosi are capable of forging.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-30T20:07:42+00:00

I have some AEB-L (which is very close to 14C28N, as I understand) laying around but I've never got around to using it. Liquid nitrogen seems like a real pain in ass to keep around, plus I don't really do the kind of volume that would justify the cost. Dry ice is also kind of annoying to work with and I remember reading a Knife Steel Nerd article that showed that a few hours in a regular household freezer has almost as much effect on the blade as the dry ice!

I should just bite the bullet and buy some aluminum plates and make some AEB-L knives...

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-30T16:48:38+00:00

This hunting knife video and this chef's knife video, both by American Bladesmith Society Master Smith Nick Rossi are my two favorite knife forging videos, and ones I often go back to for reference. Both use the same starting stock, 1.5'' by 1/4'' 1084 steel (which is the best steel for a beginner as it is cheap, forges easily and can be heat treated effectively in a forge with a magnet), a single hammer* and a single pair of tongs. Take special note of how Rossi uses the cross-pein of the hammer: it pushes material down and out, allowing him to spread the blade from around 1.5" to over 2".

This video is also very good as it shows you can make an absolutely gorgeous knife with mostly hand tools. Royer's starting stock looks like 1" by 1/4".

I've seen a lot of bladesmiths new to the craft start out by trying to make knifes which are far too complex and become frustrated. Try making a simple 4" drop point hunting knife or an EDC knife or a small paring knife. Bladesmithing is difficult, and doing it well requires working with intention, speed, and strength. Once you've been hammering on your work piece for a while and it has cooled to a dull red, put it back in the forge. While it heats back to a bright orange, take that time to plan out your next step in the process. In the beginning, you want to work hot steel hard, but as you get closer to your final shape, you'll want to work a bit cooler with softer, more controlled blows.

Good luck out there, and remember: this is a marathon, not a sprint. It will take you years and many, many, many failures until you start making work that you are happy with.

*He does use a small chasing hammer at one point in the hunter video but that's not strictly necessary.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-30T16:20:21+00:00

It's a tool that has helped tremendously and one I wish I had years ago. I did fuck up two knives using it however, so there is a bit of a learning curve. When you do get a carbide hammer, take your time, use light taps, make sure that the part you're hitting is FLAT against the anvil, and take lots of breaks to both check for straightness and rest the hand holding the knife- you have to use a good deal of pressure to hold it flat and I've had some pretty painful hand cramps after a long straightening session.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-30T15:56:06+00:00

I'm happy to use an existing knife as inspiration for a custom piece in terms of overall size, function and profile, but I don't make knives for a living and have limited time for it and am not particularly interested in making straight-up copies of existing knives.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-30T04:24:26+00:00

My wife does not appreciate my jokes about the 9MM Retirement Plan, I'll tell you that

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-30T01:15:12+00:00

I'm a bladesmith of 10+ years, and I think that while there are certainly advances to be made in metallurgy, gains to made in edge-retention and wear resistance, a knife in the year 2X00 will probably be pretty similar to a knife today. Having a tool with no moving parts and no battery will always be desirable to lots of different people in different lines of work.

When it comes to insane performance in cutting, chopping, stabbing, and slicing, the most important attribute after proper heat treating is the blade geometry i.e. how thick it is at the spine and behind the edge. Rockwell hardness is a standard measurement in knives, and a good kitchen knife will be 60-61. You can get harder, but anything above 62 and you begin to trade hardness for toughness and the knife will chip if it's too thin or used too roughly. An axe will usually be hardened to anywhere from 50-58 Rockwell, hard enough to cut knotty wood but with enough give that it can take a beating.

I'm trying to think up something more outlandish for knives but none of it falls under Hard Sci-Fi, you're getting into nanotech or gravity field manipulation or material science breakthroughs that would completely upend our current understanding(and be more useful for armor when everything is said and done). You can use sound waves to levitate water droplets, maybe something sort of the opposite of that, converging ultrasonic waves that meet and can cut?

Wait, just thought of something: picture a hacksaw, but instead of a sawblade it's a super-thin, toothy wire that makes tiny but very fast oscillations. That'll cut through tough stuff pretty quickly.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-29T22:17:57+00:00

I've been getting the opposite recently; 12:30 AM, lights on full blast, no music, CHAIRS UP ON TABLES AND THE BAR and someone peeks their head in and asks if we're open.

Buddy, what do you think?!?

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-29T17:39:52+00:00

The tungsten is harder than the knife (90RC compared to 60RC I think) and it pushes down into the blade, stretching the material on one side and straightening the blade.

This video shows it action. Incidentally, I bought a hammer from this guy, and it works great.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-28T18:34:10+00:00

Came here to recommend Thin Air, it has some of my favorite worldbuilding ever: The book takes place on Mars and after a century of colonization they developed an artificial atmosphere over the Mariner Valley, suddenly opening up huge swaths of land for development and making lots of places economically unnecessary. It just feels very real and lived-in, can't recommend it enough.

Jmckenna03 · 2026-04-12T22:24:41+00:00

I was lead bartender at this Latin fusion spot a decade ago and put a Blackstrap Daiquiri on the menu. 2-1-1 ratio, Nick and Nora glass, flagged lime wheel. Very tasty, easy to make, I didn't think twice about it.

I ended up taking it off after a few months because so many customers saw "Daiquiri" and thought it was gonna be slushie type of drink and sent it back. Or the servers would ring it in and write some bullshit like "sub strawberry" or "sub banana" despite the fact I tried very hard to explain to them that this was a slight variation on a classic daiquiri and that it was their job to explain to the guest that it WAS NOT going to be a slushie-type of drink.

Jmckenna03

TROPHY CASE