The Hammer In
This past weekend I attended a Hammer In at Haywood Community College. It was VERY informative. There were classes for 1 and a half days on knifemaking, from start to finish, engraving, and steel making. It kind of blew my mind, but I am a diligent note-taker so I didn’t have to remember it all. I spent the first part of Saturday in the knifemaking seminar, where the instructors basically went over any troubleshooting questions we had about the whole process.
Jason and Bert explaining the ins and outs of knifemaking. They were very knowledgeable.
For the second part of Saturday and most of Sunday, I hung out with David Burnett (and another man whose name, unfortunately, I cannot remember), and made carbon steel out of regular steel. It was really cool! they cut the steel bar into coin-like slices and slowly put them into this little furnace that they made, along with tons of natural charcoal. The steel would get super heated, melt and absorb the carbon from the charcoal, thus becoming carbon steel! Woo-Hoo, Science!
Cutting the steel bar into discs on a big, scary cutting machine.
The furnace that burned about 1 and a half of those buckets of charcoal to make a little bit of carbon steel.
David Burnett hammering out the very small amount of carbon steel we got out of the process.
I can’t wait until the next one in the spring! If you are interested, go to http://www.haywood.edu/ to check it out!
Later!
