The birth of a blade 6. The Madsted knife.

This is a post I have wanted to make for a very long time. It is about a project that I made together with @katharsisdrill.
My first love is swords, but many other blades and tools have seen the light in my workshop too. One of my absolute favourites is the Madsted knife.

A while back I was talking knives with @katharsisdrill, particularly the beautiful designs of the danish iron age knives, called womens knives. We talked about making a kitchen knife of some sort and it wasnt long before @katharsisdrill found pencil and paper.

He quickly started drawing and a while later he came up with a design that I really liked. He asked if I would try making it in steel, and I agreed.

I made a prototype and we talked a little back and forth about improvements and changes, and when we were both satisfied I forged up a zero-series
there is still minor improvements to be had in the way I shape the handle but all in all it is pretty close to finished.

You can follow the process here and it all looks very neat but it was really a lot of trial and error along the way.
I wanted to be able to make them efficiently enough for me to be able to sell them at an affordable prize so I had to really optimize the process as much as possible

It is quite interesting how much time you can cut of when you make something for the second or subsequent times.
for every new knife I learned more about how to shape the metal and how to get as close as possible to the shape I wanted, with only the hammer. They say that for every hour at the anvil, you save a day at the grinder, and there is truth in that, even if it may not be that much time you can save.
I have managed to get the working time down to app. 3 hours, making more than one at a time also helps.

I have taken one for myself and @katharsisdrill have gotten the prototype as well as one of the 0-series. I have sold 3 but I still have one left, which I might put up for sale here on steemit if anyone is interested.

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Im EvilHippie, a compulsive creative and jack o' trades. if you want to know more about me, check out my introduction post here

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