As I like to have little projects to work on, especially ones where I get to try out new techniques, I have started making a small Anglo-Saxon styled file knife. What is a file knife you ask? Well, its pretty simple, its a knife made out of an old file. Its how a lot of knifemakers begin in the trade as files are the most easily obtainable source of high carbon steel. Very high carbon usually, which is great for making a knife with a really keen edge, but it also makes the metal a bit more tricky to work as it is much harder and more brittle than lower carbon steels. I like to make them every now and then as one of the first steps towards serious knifemaking is to buy named steel in bulk as it is then much easier to get a consistent and reliable hardness. File steel varies enormously and there is usually no chance of finding out exactly what steel you are working with so it can be a bit of a leap of faith when you come to the heat treatment phase, it is all to easy to mistreat the steel and end up with the blade you have slaved over for hours snapped into pieces.
The first thing I did was chuck it in the forge and heat it to a medium red glow to remove the previous heat treatment. If “medium red” is a bit vague (and it is, the colours are almost impossible to describe) you can hold a magnet to the steel at intervals. As soon as the magnet ceases to be attracted to the steel, pull the file out and put it to one side to cool slowly. This will soften the steel so that it is much easier to work and doesn’t destroy all your abrasives and grinding disks. It is possible to work it in its original hardened state, if you keep it cool you can grind out a blade whilst keeping the original heat treatment. This would make for a dead sharp and hard blade but is tricky to do and the blade would be prone to snapping as the raw file steel is very brittle. I like to soften them and then risk re-heat treating as it is much faster to rough it out this way.
This is the file I started with, I picked it up at a boot fair for about 50p. Its is really dull and rusty, but its a good length (about 9″) and as I will be making a stock removal blade, I need to consider the tang length as well as the blade itself. The tang is the bit of the blade that goes into the handle. A good trick here is to use the file’s tang as the end of the knife tang, so you can get as much blade as possible.
I marked out the profile I wanted onto the file in permanent marker, then cut it to shape with an angle grinder and started to grind it down into a wedge section. As I was excited I didn’t take any photos, ho hum, I’ll have to do another tutorial at some point. Fortunately I have a number of old files kicking about! Here it is after rough grinding and smoothing:
I have chopped the point off to give it the seax shape, and ground it to have a slight reverse taper (fat towards the tip) as lots of historical seaxes had these features. I then cut the tang as at this point I only had the file tang. If I had done this sooner I would have had less grinding to do, but I am pretty experienced so it actually doesn’t make too much difference. If it is your first knife and you are going slowly, cut first:
There it is, a perfectly serviceable seax blade in a high carbon steel. Historical? Hardly, the steel is too good. Cool?
Hell yes!
Making the Past 