Bird-and-Trout Knife
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I started with a small, hardened file, then drew out the tang (lengthened the handle) and shaped the blade on the forge. I curled the tang up and into a twist to provide a comfortable palm swell and drew out the blade, then finished the edges on a grinding wheel and ground in a finger groove for comfort and safety.
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Utility Knife
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I started with a blank (a pre-hardened knife blade) and fitted and attached a Damascus finger guard, then punched out dozens of leather pieces to create the bulk of the handle, along with some plastic and silver spacers and a tagua nut butt-cap. With the exception of the optional guard, the entire handle could have been made with only hand tools. I stacked and epoxied the handle materials onto the tang of the knife, then ground the handle into a comfortable shape and polished and oiled it.
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Toolmaking and the Apocalypse
Introduction
Apocalypse is such a broad, complex category that can tell so many different stories in so many different genres, but there are themes that stick out in apocalypse stories across the board: perseverance, humanity, and change are just a few. This project looks at both the practical side of apocalypse, examining blacksmithing and toolmaking and two different knives that could be made in an apocalypse setting; but it also examines ties between toolmaking, one of humanities most lasting skills, and apocalypse themes.
Exploration of Blacksmithing and the Cutting Edge
Blacksmithing is one of humanity’s oldest traditions. The earliest archeological evidence of blacksmithing is an iron dagger found in Egypt, dated back to 1350 BC (Blandford, 1988). The term “blacksmithing” denotes “smithing” with iron specifically – “smith” is a generic term for the craft of metal work, with different colors indicating different professions within smithing (Blandford,1988). For instance, a “whitesmith” is one who works with lead; a “blacksmith” is one who works with iron. Over the years, “blacksmith” has grown ubiquitous enough to simply mean “smith” to most laymen.
For much of human history, blacksmithing was an essential function for quality of life. Blacksmiths took on many roles, from farriering, or horseshoe making, to nail making, chain making, armor making, tool making, and weapon making (Blandford, 1988). The average blacksmith would require knowledge of all of these crafts, which vary widely in skill and tool requirements. During much of the Iron Age, a blacksmith’s forge and tool set remained relatively unchanged (Hrisoulas, 1987). Throughout time, the basic components of any forge setup have been the actual forge itself – usually a combination of control of air pressure and coal or charcoal, an anvil on a stand, a container of water, a container of oil, and a variety of hammers, tongs, and files (Light, 2007). For thousands of years, these have been the basic components of any forge.
The cutting edge has a history much older than even blacksmithing, older even than humanity, or at least Homo Sapiens. The earliest known evidence of a stone tool is from 1.36 million years ago in China (O’Neil, 2005). Humanities ancestors, the Homo Erectus, learned toolmaking and slowly evolved the process over hundreds of thousands of years. For most of human history, a cutting edge has consisted of a piece of flint chipped into a razor-sharp, but uneven, blade, sometimes but not always mounted onto wood with twine or hide (Hrisoulas, 1987). For most of human history, the cutting edge was an essential tool for daily life. Its oldest uses include hunting, food preparation, and war; but as humanity developed so too did their use for the cutting edge, it has also played key roles in agriculture, construction, and crafting of other tools (Hrisoulas, 1987).
With the advent of the Bronze age, and later the Iron age, the sophistication of the cutting edge exploded upwards, leading to the modern knife. The Industrial Age also played a key part in the evolution of the cutting edge, introducing humanity to new processes to develop sophisticated steels under heats and pressures that had been previously unobtainable; although it also effectively ended blacksmithing as a profession, replacing it with factory work and machining (Blandford, 1988).
Project
The goal of my project was to illustrate a few simpler toolmaking, specifically knifemaking, techniques that anyone can learn with little trouble or financial investment. For the purposes of this project, I used no sophisticated blacksmithing techniques and as little sophisticated equipment as possible. The most expensive piece of equipment I used was a belt sander, but anyone can buy a $5 dollar file and do in three days what a belt sander can do in one hour if they are motivated. For a small knife such as the one that will be discussed below, my forge setup could be approximated with a propane torch, a hammer, and a $20 vice.
For the project, I built two knives: a “bird-and-trout” knife, a small three-finger knife that was forged from a small file, and a larger “utility” knife, which actually included no blacksmithing at all. The bird-and-trout knife was created almost entirely at the forge to minimize grinding time, which could be prohibitive to an entry-level blacksmith. The advantages of the bird-and-trout knife are its lack of required knowledge and grinding and the fact that it can be made from start to finish with materials obtained cheaply from any hardware store. In an apocalypse scenario, it is easy to believe that these items, while certainly more valuable than they are today, would still be readily available. Its main disadvantage is its limited use, at only a 3 ½ inch blade and lack of any padding on the handle, it can not be used for certain larger or more strenuous tasks. Most files are made of quality, hardened steel and can be easily repurposed into a knife blade. I drew out the tang, or “handle” of the file, then curled it up into itself to create a comfortable handle. I started the bevel, or “edge” of the blade while forging it, then completed it with grinding, which could have been done with a file.
The second knife, the “utility knife,” was created with the idea in mind that someone with limited blacksmithing knowledge or equipment may want to create a larger, more useful knife while still minimizing their time and money invested. In an apocalypse scenario, all of the materials used to build this knife survive rot and decay and could easily be salvaged from an old house or factory. As previously mentioned, this build actually requires no blacksmithing. I started with a knife “blank” – a pre-made, pre-hardened knife blade that is prohibitively large for a beginner knifemaker to attempt, which I bought for $7.50. The advantage of this knife are its size, superior steel, and generalized design that makes it useful for almost any task a cutting edge would be used for. The disadvantage is the increased level of difficulty from the bird-and-trout knife. The knife was “through-tang” style, meaning that a handle would be attached around the metal instead of one either side of it. To a beginner, this means that no advanced drilling equipment or knowledge is needed; the handle material is leather which was stamped out by hand and epoxied on one piece at a time to form a handle. To create this knife, all someone would really need are a sharp cutting tool, some leather, denim, or really any comparable soft material, and some epoxy which can be found at any hardware store.
Apocalypse
While blacksmithing may have faded into obscurity today, it is reasonably likely that in any “post-post-industrial” apocalypse setting it would quickly become as important again as it ever was. In the world of Station Eleven, for instance, some form of blacksmithing, or at least toolmaking born out of scavenging, would be an important aspect of life, as pieces of technology sat and gathered dust in museums of nostalgia. Even in more fantasy settings like The Year of the Flood or Zone One, characters like Toby or Mark Spitz would need a cutting tool on a daily basis to get by.
More than just practicality, toolmaking also plays into integral apocalypse themes that we have been discussing all semester. Fashioning your own tools from the rubble of civilization has themes of survival, perseverance, and continuation of culture. Blacksmithing, and before that the creation of edged tools, is one of humanity’s oldest traditions; if humanity were to survive an apocalypse and begin to rebuild culture then an integral part of that culture would be the reintroduction of toolmaking. We have discussed perseverance, both of society and of individuals, during an apocalypse in this class, and what that looks like. Tools are an excellent example of perseverance: people have hammers, screwdrivers, or knives given to them from their grandparents, or you find hundred-year-old tools at a yard sale that can be cleaned up and given new life. Are these old tools the same as they used to be? No, they have changed: they have been scuffed, ground down, maybe rehandled or touched up in different ways. They are almost never worse, just different; they show the marks of age and use. To me, this is a perfect metaphor for some of the apocalypse themes we have discussed this semester. Tools persevere, they age, and they can decay; but they also can be salvaged and made whole again with a little bit of work. A lot of the characters we read about and discussed were damaged or hurt in different ways, some of them even irredeemably; but every story had a sparkle of hope, or at least a compelling message, to inspire the reader and give them something to think about.
Conclusion
Toolmaking is literally older than humanity as a species, and there is no reason to believe it would be lost in an apocalypse, as long as there are still people around afterwards. There are many ties between toolmaking and apocalypse. Some of them are practical—in most realistic apocalypse setting a knife would be one of the most important things a person could carry and use on a daily basis, while some of them are more personal—knives, and tools in general, persevere yet change like the characters in the novel we have read. Additionally, in an apocalypse setting or not, this paper and the corresponding pictures and videos demonstrate a cheap and easy way that anyone could make one of these knives.
References
Blandford, Percy W. (1980). Practical Blacksmithing and Metalworking: Second Edition. Blue Ridge Summet, PA: TAB Books.
Hrisoulas, Jim. (1987). The Complete Bladesmith: Forging your way to perfection. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press.
Light, John D. (2007). A Dictionary of Blacksmithing Terms. Historical Archaeology:2007, Vol. 41.
O'Neil, D. (2005, October 11). Early human evolution: Early human culture. https://web.archive.org/web/20070512035553/http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo_3.htm
Apocalypse is such a broad, complex category that can tell so many different stories in so many different genres, but there are themes that stick out in apocalypse stories across the board: perseverance, humanity, and change are just a few. This project looks at both the practical side of apocalypse, examining blacksmithing and toolmaking and two different knives that could be made in an apocalypse setting; but it also examines ties between toolmaking, one of humanities most lasting skills, and apocalypse themes.
Exploration of Blacksmithing and the Cutting Edge
Blacksmithing is one of humanity’s oldest traditions. The earliest archeological evidence of blacksmithing is an iron dagger found in Egypt, dated back to 1350 BC (Blandford, 1988). The term “blacksmithing” denotes “smithing” with iron specifically – “smith” is a generic term for the craft of metal work, with different colors indicating different professions within smithing (Blandford,1988). For instance, a “whitesmith” is one who works with lead; a “blacksmith” is one who works with iron. Over the years, “blacksmith” has grown ubiquitous enough to simply mean “smith” to most laymen.
For much of human history, blacksmithing was an essential function for quality of life. Blacksmiths took on many roles, from farriering, or horseshoe making, to nail making, chain making, armor making, tool making, and weapon making (Blandford, 1988). The average blacksmith would require knowledge of all of these crafts, which vary widely in skill and tool requirements. During much of the Iron Age, a blacksmith’s forge and tool set remained relatively unchanged (Hrisoulas, 1987). Throughout time, the basic components of any forge setup have been the actual forge itself – usually a combination of control of air pressure and coal or charcoal, an anvil on a stand, a container of water, a container of oil, and a variety of hammers, tongs, and files (Light, 2007). For thousands of years, these have been the basic components of any forge.
The cutting edge has a history much older than even blacksmithing, older even than humanity, or at least Homo Sapiens. The earliest known evidence of a stone tool is from 1.36 million years ago in China (O’Neil, 2005). Humanities ancestors, the Homo Erectus, learned toolmaking and slowly evolved the process over hundreds of thousands of years. For most of human history, a cutting edge has consisted of a piece of flint chipped into a razor-sharp, but uneven, blade, sometimes but not always mounted onto wood with twine or hide (Hrisoulas, 1987). For most of human history, the cutting edge was an essential tool for daily life. Its oldest uses include hunting, food preparation, and war; but as humanity developed so too did their use for the cutting edge, it has also played key roles in agriculture, construction, and crafting of other tools (Hrisoulas, 1987).
With the advent of the Bronze age, and later the Iron age, the sophistication of the cutting edge exploded upwards, leading to the modern knife. The Industrial Age also played a key part in the evolution of the cutting edge, introducing humanity to new processes to develop sophisticated steels under heats and pressures that had been previously unobtainable; although it also effectively ended blacksmithing as a profession, replacing it with factory work and machining (Blandford, 1988).
Project
The goal of my project was to illustrate a few simpler toolmaking, specifically knifemaking, techniques that anyone can learn with little trouble or financial investment. For the purposes of this project, I used no sophisticated blacksmithing techniques and as little sophisticated equipment as possible. The most expensive piece of equipment I used was a belt sander, but anyone can buy a $5 dollar file and do in three days what a belt sander can do in one hour if they are motivated. For a small knife such as the one that will be discussed below, my forge setup could be approximated with a propane torch, a hammer, and a $20 vice.
For the project, I built two knives: a “bird-and-trout” knife, a small three-finger knife that was forged from a small file, and a larger “utility” knife, which actually included no blacksmithing at all. The bird-and-trout knife was created almost entirely at the forge to minimize grinding time, which could be prohibitive to an entry-level blacksmith. The advantages of the bird-and-trout knife are its lack of required knowledge and grinding and the fact that it can be made from start to finish with materials obtained cheaply from any hardware store. In an apocalypse scenario, it is easy to believe that these items, while certainly more valuable than they are today, would still be readily available. Its main disadvantage is its limited use, at only a 3 ½ inch blade and lack of any padding on the handle, it can not be used for certain larger or more strenuous tasks. Most files are made of quality, hardened steel and can be easily repurposed into a knife blade. I drew out the tang, or “handle” of the file, then curled it up into itself to create a comfortable handle. I started the bevel, or “edge” of the blade while forging it, then completed it with grinding, which could have been done with a file.
The second knife, the “utility knife,” was created with the idea in mind that someone with limited blacksmithing knowledge or equipment may want to create a larger, more useful knife while still minimizing their time and money invested. In an apocalypse scenario, all of the materials used to build this knife survive rot and decay and could easily be salvaged from an old house or factory. As previously mentioned, this build actually requires no blacksmithing. I started with a knife “blank” – a pre-made, pre-hardened knife blade that is prohibitively large for a beginner knifemaker to attempt, which I bought for $7.50. The advantage of this knife are its size, superior steel, and generalized design that makes it useful for almost any task a cutting edge would be used for. The disadvantage is the increased level of difficulty from the bird-and-trout knife. The knife was “through-tang” style, meaning that a handle would be attached around the metal instead of one either side of it. To a beginner, this means that no advanced drilling equipment or knowledge is needed; the handle material is leather which was stamped out by hand and epoxied on one piece at a time to form a handle. To create this knife, all someone would really need are a sharp cutting tool, some leather, denim, or really any comparable soft material, and some epoxy which can be found at any hardware store.
Apocalypse
While blacksmithing may have faded into obscurity today, it is reasonably likely that in any “post-post-industrial” apocalypse setting it would quickly become as important again as it ever was. In the world of Station Eleven, for instance, some form of blacksmithing, or at least toolmaking born out of scavenging, would be an important aspect of life, as pieces of technology sat and gathered dust in museums of nostalgia. Even in more fantasy settings like The Year of the Flood or Zone One, characters like Toby or Mark Spitz would need a cutting tool on a daily basis to get by.
More than just practicality, toolmaking also plays into integral apocalypse themes that we have been discussing all semester. Fashioning your own tools from the rubble of civilization has themes of survival, perseverance, and continuation of culture. Blacksmithing, and before that the creation of edged tools, is one of humanity’s oldest traditions; if humanity were to survive an apocalypse and begin to rebuild culture then an integral part of that culture would be the reintroduction of toolmaking. We have discussed perseverance, both of society and of individuals, during an apocalypse in this class, and what that looks like. Tools are an excellent example of perseverance: people have hammers, screwdrivers, or knives given to them from their grandparents, or you find hundred-year-old tools at a yard sale that can be cleaned up and given new life. Are these old tools the same as they used to be? No, they have changed: they have been scuffed, ground down, maybe rehandled or touched up in different ways. They are almost never worse, just different; they show the marks of age and use. To me, this is a perfect metaphor for some of the apocalypse themes we have discussed this semester. Tools persevere, they age, and they can decay; but they also can be salvaged and made whole again with a little bit of work. A lot of the characters we read about and discussed were damaged or hurt in different ways, some of them even irredeemably; but every story had a sparkle of hope, or at least a compelling message, to inspire the reader and give them something to think about.
Conclusion
Toolmaking is literally older than humanity as a species, and there is no reason to believe it would be lost in an apocalypse, as long as there are still people around afterwards. There are many ties between toolmaking and apocalypse. Some of them are practical—in most realistic apocalypse setting a knife would be one of the most important things a person could carry and use on a daily basis, while some of them are more personal—knives, and tools in general, persevere yet change like the characters in the novel we have read. Additionally, in an apocalypse setting or not, this paper and the corresponding pictures and videos demonstrate a cheap and easy way that anyone could make one of these knives.
References
Blandford, Percy W. (1980). Practical Blacksmithing and Metalworking: Second Edition. Blue Ridge Summet, PA: TAB Books.
Hrisoulas, Jim. (1987). The Complete Bladesmith: Forging your way to perfection. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press.
Light, John D. (2007). A Dictionary of Blacksmithing Terms. Historical Archaeology:2007, Vol. 41.
O'Neil, D. (2005, October 11). Early human evolution: Early human culture. https://web.archive.org/web/20070512035553/http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo_3.htm
