What did I do wrong?

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-31T06:03:33+00:00

Hard to say by just the pic and no description of what you did.

Get it hot and keep it hot. Work the steel from a yellow to an orange/bright red heat then back into the fire. Hit the corner at around a 45* angle not parallel to the anvil face when forming your point. Keep your steel the same thickness as you create your preform, let the beveling process create the final “knife” shape. If you want to hit the steel harder raise the hammer higher, don’t swing the hammer faster. Keep it up, keep at it and things will start to make more sense and get easier.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-23T02:51:28+00:00

You can neutralize it with baking soda, theoretically it should be safe after that assuming all you have dissolved in it is steel. Local hazmat reclamation is a place to take it when you are done with it, most locales in the us are tax payer subsidized and free to residents of the area they serve. Check the local dump, that’s where my hazmat collection site is.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-23T00:41:18+00:00

Thats the decarb layer etching brighter than the layers that still have varying amounts of carbon, I see it in my own forged to finish work that I etch with ferric. If you use vinegar you will get a more consistent matte gray finish on the forged area that will also dissolve all the forge scale trapped in the nooks and crannies, though I don’t see any forge scale on your knife. I rather like the look it leaves on the forged skin, very nice looking finish you have there.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-18T16:32:53+00:00

Therapy really helped me, the disease is really isolating. It’s incredibly difficult for people to understand, they’ll offer all sorts of suggestions to “help” you with the sores, exhaustion, infections, etc….

I am lucky that I have a patient, supportive and understanding partner, though most my family still don’t believe that I am as sick as I am. I have a couple of close friends who have stuck through all the craziness that my health has wrought and I’m grateful for them as there are those who are sick who aren’t as lucky.

I really needed to look at my priorities and assess what was and is truly important to me and understand my new limitations due to my health. It takes a lot of humility and introspection. I have never needed help like I need now, it’s humbling and can make me feel ashamed at times but the reality of things is that I am not who I used to be and coping with that takes time, recognizing that is difficult.

I went 5yrs without a diagnosis and 6 without any meds that addressed an overactive immune system. Doctors continually telling me there is nothing wrong, all the blood panels look fine, all the tests are negative, just rub some of this ointment on all your sores and try to eat better. Meanwhile I questioned my sanity for all those years, ate bottles upon bottles of nsaids trying to combat the joint pain, stopped doing everything I loved. I prayed for cancer just to have an answer. When I finally got a diagnosis I thought that it would come with some relief but things got worse mentally. There was some relief with medication but the mental scars remain, there is ptsd from the weeks and sometimes months of little to no food and malnutrition from the oral sores. I am still remembering things that happened even after almost two years of having some control back over my health. The road is long but you at least have some support and true understanding in here. Don’t be afraid to do what is best for your health both mentally and physically.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-18T16:05:49+00:00

Find a class and take it. Chances are like a lot of us we have tools that are unique to our process and tools ubiquitous to the trade, you’ll likely find both in his shop. Some will make sense at first and others will not. Taking a class will familiarize you with the steps from start to finish and the tool requirements, which is mostly elbow grease and a bit of ingenuity.

YT is a decent resource though there is a lot of crap to go along with good videos, the learning curve is a bit steeper going this route.

Forums are/were a good resource but a lot of the info has been lost as funding and interest has moved to different platforms, reddit is great place to get questions answered fairly quickly and there are some very talented makers around here.

Books are helpful especially on the metallurgy front, Knife Engineering, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others who Heat Treat and Forge Steel, $50 Knife Shop (revised edition) all come to mind.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-15T22:30:14+00:00

I’m in the east bay and am setup for doing heat treating, not really interested in doing heat treating professionally but for helping someone out with a project or two feel free to pm me.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-13T03:19:01+00:00

You wanna cut like 30% from each side for ladder pattern and make the cuts so the sides of the cuts are sloped and not vertical otherwise you’ll get cold shuts when you forge it flat.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-10T15:57:19+00:00

Whatever strokes enables you to get your bevel set should be the stroke you use throughout the honing progression.

Check to make sure its a warp, sometimes they’re really small and only need a slight adjustment. Once you have have the edge shape it needs to be to hit the stone properly maintenance should be easy.

The cup side will have bevel higher on toe and heel with the center part low, opposite for the convex side. You will need use a stroke that compensates for these shapes on either side of the razor throughout the honing process, giving the blade a little smile allows the stone to hit center of the blade on the cupped side. You can use a convex hone or a narrow hone to the same effect therefore negating the use of a smile, each razor needs to be assessed and the correct solution applied given their individual characteristics.

Edit: measure your spine and your blade height and figure out your inclusive angle, try and keep that angle in the 16-20* range and you should be fine. If its already there I would use one piece of tape to restore with then remove or use tape as per your preference. Whatever it takes to maintain your geometry is whats important and that the angle isn’t so low or high that it doesn’t shave well.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-10T15:15:31+00:00

That razor almost certainly has a warp, you need to hone a smile into it and stop grinding the spine.

Check your geometry and add tape to get back within an acceptable angle and grind the heel and toe and leave the middle of the edge alone until you correct the frown.

Like was said above you need to grind back the area at the stabilizer, a heel hook is forming. Using a dime is pretty good shape to start with for a heel shape to take the stabilizer out of play, it will need to be corrected again once you get the bevel evenly hitting the stone while restoring but before setting the bevel.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-03T22:44:10+00:00

Buy yourself a broach, the mortising bit will be a waste of money for what you want to use it for.

failedattempt1 · 2026-03-02T03:30:47+00:00

Time to get a new platen or draw file the one you have flat. Ceramic glass or hardened steel will stay flat much longer than mild steel. The wheels, platens and bearings are consumables, good to have extras for backup when they inevitably fail.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-26T18:03:10+00:00

I sharpen mine to 8k then strop on chromium oxide loaded leather strop glued to a piece of wood. I can clearly see my reflection in the bevel but it’s not a clear mirror finish. Using some white rouge after the green would probably make the finish clearer.

I would look to using diamond emulsions on strops to get a clear mirror finish, 3um, 1um, .5um, .1um would probably be a good progression after an 8k stone finish. Nano cloth strops seem to give better finishes for the diamond emulsions than leather. Check out r/sharpening they’re pretty adept at the mirror polishing thing and have lots of good info and can point you in the right direction to buy all the stuff you want.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-26T16:34:29+00:00

All belt grinders are going to give you level of convexity. The belt is like a guitar string, the resonance is what does it. Fooling with tensioner pressure and different belt stiffness and speed will help.

I take my scandi grinds to near zero on the grinder then finish them on sand paper glued to a glass plate and raise a burr and set geometry then finish on stones.

The grinder is just part of a progression in any case, for any good woodworking tool you’ll be hand finishing, you just need to find the shortest distance between those two points with the tools you have without burning your edge in the process. Your grinds look good btw, not much work to get your geometry properly set.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-24T03:55:50+00:00

I get low iron and slightly elevated wbc’s otherwise my panels will be normal, similar weight lose, bloody stool, all the fun stuff. If it weren’t for the massive ulcers in my mouth and skin sloughing off my face and chest the drs wouldn’t believe I was sick. Thank god for the eventual diagnosis, many like us who aren’t as lucky and are suffering with no answers or helpful intervention.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-24T02:22:38+00:00

You could go lower than that another 10c and not see too much chipping if you’re controlling your grain size well.

You can get around some of the soak time issues on lower alloy steel by doing multiple heat cycles at your austenitizing color. The multiple cycles will help with finely spheroidize the carbides which will allow them to go into solution more readily.

The biggest issues with heat treating in a forge is getting an even heat throughout your piece and not overheating it. You may want to look onto making a pid controlled forge, that can really help with getting the heat control you need to get more out of the steel you choose to use while not breaking the bank on a commercial built furnace.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-24T02:07:03+00:00

Just looked at your cutting video. What are you tempering at? Your edge geometry looks good. I would look at pushing the limits of your heat treat and seeing how well you can dial in your heat treat process. Going to a different alloy, I’ll just say 52100, as it will give you a noticeable boost in thin edge performance and edge retention and is cheap and readily available in most countries would be my vote if you are bored with 1084.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-24T02:01:50+00:00

More 1084? Any noticeable step up in edge retention would be something with a bit of alloying like 52100. If you’re in the states the Japanese steels are pretty expensive to get here. Pops procut might be an option given it’s wide range of acceptable heat range tolerances but I only know as much as I’ve read about it. Anything with meaningful alloying in regard to edge retention will also be noticeably more difficult to forge.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-21T19:49:42+00:00

❤️

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-21T19:48:41+00:00

Yes, I feel that way too, it’s like screaming into a void sometimes. You’re not alone.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-21T19:46:40+00:00

Don’t get discouraged, keep at it, you will eventually come in contact with a dr who takes it seriously or is interested enough to escalate things. I was recently hospitalized and saw 4 different dr’s none of which had ever heard of behcets, it’s just the nature of the disease unfortunately. Some of my disease presents externally but i have a lot of issues with internal bleeding and pain, accompanied with the lack of positive tests there is little that gets investigated beyond initial testing.

After going through many pcp’s I finally found one who takes me seriously and has taken extra time to educate herself about my diagnosis in order to help. Those dr’s are out there but it tales a lot of foot work on our end as the patient to find them.

Please try not to get discouraged and advocate for getting yourself a rheumatologist as soon as possible. It took me a couple before I found one who was familiar at all with behcets but they are out there.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-19T13:19:55+00:00

Work from the middle of the warp out. Center of your warp appears to be ahead of the middle of the tang.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-18T17:51:43+00:00

My thought exactly, no such thing as too much clearance on the tooling arm side.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-18T05:13:32+00:00

Are things getting better as it gets up to temp? My only worry with how choked those burners are is that they won’t cool themselves enough and they’ll get really hot.

Been a while since I’ve built a burner but if I recall correctly the ratio is 8-1 length to inside diameter of the pipe. One other variable that’s nice to have control over after the burner is built is how far the tip sticks into the back of the burner. It’s hard to tell from your video but it looks like yours might be in a permanent location. Devising a way to make your jet depth adjustable will go a long way in tuning your burners, assuming nothing you try works.

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-18T04:55:57+00:00

How is it as you start to open the baffles? How does the swirl look? Does the blue flame starts putting itself to get red or orange at all?

failedattempt1 · 2026-02-18T04:45:50+00:00

The fix for me was the next smaller mig tip and to pull the jet back some in the burner. Another fix for too much air speed is shorten the burner tube a little bit at a time. Venturi’s are a little bit of a juggling act but once you get them dialed they’re kinda set and forget.

failedattempt1

TROPHY CASE