Copper knives

[Draven]

Howdy folks!
Been a while since I posted, but BCUK has remained my homepage

Anyhoo, I was wondering about Copper Knives. My fiancee (I got ENGAGED ) is after an Athame, and I was thinking of having a go at making one. Any suggestions? Somewhere to get round or square copper bar stock at a reasonable price? I know next to nothing about where to buy the stuff, other than pipes for plumbing. Earth rods used to be solid copper but all the ones I've found have been copper plated steel

I presume that it would have to be work hardened?

Cheers!

 

[Mike Ameling]

Check with a scrap yard or electrical contractor for copper. Ask about some large electrical panel BUSS BARS, or for some TERMINALS from transformers. I picked up two bars that measured 1 inch by 1 1/2 inches and 12 inches long! I also got a 9 inch long round bar 1 1/4 inches in diameter! That's a lot of copper! And many years ago, I traded for a small sheet of thick copper from a knife makers supply place. It was 1/4 inch thick, 1 3/4 inches wide, and 9 inches long. They were selling it for use in making the handle guards and butt caps.

Of course, this was all years ago before the scrap price of copper climbed through the roof! So copper won't be cheap these days. But a scrap yard might let you scrounge through their copper pile to see if something there will work for your forging. Yes, they will charge you lots for it, but at least you will be able to see and hold what you want before you buy it.

I posted this stuff below about some Copper Culture items I forged up last March. It was over on the Firecraft forum under the topic Wood Fired Smelter. It doesn't look like cut-n-paste grabbed the pic from the message, but I also put the pic that in my Photo Gallery, so check it out up there.

I'll be happy to help answer any questions if I can.

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
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Last summer I took a break from traditional blacksmithing, and I spent a couple days forging copper. I used all my normal blacksmithing tools and forge, but I started with copper. The hardest part is getting a big enough chunk of copper to start with. I scrounged up a copper wire, Lightning Rod aroung 9/16 inches round, and a big electrical Buss Bar 1 1/2 inch by 2 inches. I heated the copper up in my blacksmith forge. When it was glowing red, I then cut it into smaller chunks, and then forged those into the shapes I wanted.



I was making some replicas of some early Indian Copper Culture pieces for a park/museum up by the Great Lakes. The picture shows a group of fish hooks, a small tanged spear head, two awls, and several knife blades. I can't find the picture of the two big socketed spear heads.

I did the major forging/shaping with the copper hot - glowing red. I then finished each item by cold hammering them. The cold hammering hardens the copper, but too much makes it brittle and causes it to split/crack. Plus copper and brass heat-treat the opposite of steel. To heat-treat it hard, you let it air-cool. To soften it, you quench it in water.

Interesting little project. The pieces turned out pretty darn close to original artifacts. But it's is easy to tell the difference, since I started with modern refined copper. Now, I did pick up some raw copper nuggets to take it to the next level - work with the copper in it's original dug/found condition, and see how that works. These next pieces I better deeply mark - they would be too easy for someone to pass them off as originals. But forging copper is much harder than forging iron/steel. Copper absorbs the hammer blow, where iron/steel has some "rebound". So you have to work harder to bring the hammer back up after each blow. This will wear out your arm much much faster than you think it should.

So, I would advise you to find a bigger chunk of copper to start with to forge up your arrowheads. Big electrical junction boxes have copper Buss Bars in them. A scrap yard should have some scrap ones laying around. And they might have a copper grounding rod, also called a lightening rod - but make sure that it is solid copper and not just copper coated. You can buy new from an electric supply company, but you would end up paying a high price.

A wood fire will get copper hot enough to work - glowing red. Have a big enough wood fire with a good bed of coals. Adding a little extra air helps a lot. I have used a length of 1/4 inch pipe as a Blow-Tube to help the fire.

I hope this helps. Good luck on your adventure into working copper. But a word of warning. Blacksmithing is Addictive! And working copper is a close cousin!

yhs
Mike Ameling

 

[Toddy]

Lot of good info there Mike, , appreciated.:You_Rock_

Draven, John Hood & Son in Glasgow are non-ferrous metal stockholders and they will supply copper in small quantities. They will also supply bronze too.
Have you seen the bronze sickle thread?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Dave Budd]

I've made athames from all kinds of materials (brass, copper, perspex, iron, steel, wood) and I find the easiest way to make dounle edged blades is to grind not forge (symetry is a bugger when forging!). If recycling then try and find the strips nailed to buldings as lightening conductors, but I reckon you are better buying it new: it will be flat and clean and you can choose the size. Also you don't need to work harden it as the athame isn't meant to cut on this plane, so doesn't need to hold or take an edge

 

[Draven]

That's great info Mike, thanks a lot

Toddy - Do you have any details or a website for them? I did a search on Google but only found sculptors under the same name How do their prices go? Thanks

Dave - They're not meant to cut whatnow?
Yeah, I am considering grinding rather than forging, particularly for the one I make my fiancee so that it looks "prettier" Though I would like to try forging it at some point, it's always been an interest

Cheers y'all!

 

[Toddy]

Hood John & Co, 55 Cheapside St, Glasgow, G3 8BH
0141-221 2433

There'a another place in Govan too, can't remember the name though, metal warhouse or the like.

I also know of Coatdyke metals in Airdrie, don't know about copper or prices for them.
I do know that the Govan ones charged us a fortune for phosphor bronze for bearings, and we eventually pestered ScrappyMick....pm if you want his number.....and he turned up with some amazingly good stuff. He won't carry what you want as standard stock though, and the metal stockholders will let you have a good looksee at what is available before you buy.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[John Fenna]

Many tears ago I "cold forged" a copper knife out of a copper rivet I found in some driftwood.
I bound the handle in copper wire and then hammered that flat as well.
The blade had a deep crescent shape, caused by hammering the bajazuz out of the one side to get an edge, and I finished it by hand grinding it on a coarse stone.
It did not take a very good edge and was quick to get very dull in even light use....
It is a good job that it was only ever intended as a story telling prop for my telling the tales of "Copperknife, the little Indian", stories I made up. adapted from traditional stories etc for telling in a "Red Indian" setting to our local Beavers. I adopted the name "Louder Bull" for my story telling persona (say it with a Brummy accent...)
Full of Scouting ethos, these stories developped into quite a series and I even typed some up and copies were given to Beaver Leaders for future telling.
Some of the Beavers grew up with these stories and got to hear the final installment - "Copperknife gets L**d" - as Ventures/leaders on one of the "Survival Camps" I used to run....
I still have the knife and some of the stories somewhere, but I think the stories stand up better than the knife... which tells you a lot about the knife!

It was always meant to look home made (part of the story) and"antique"......

 

[Mike Ameling]

I finally found where I stashed that pic of the Copper Culture stuff I forged up last spring. (It's waaaay too easy to loose track of things on these ... infernal machines!)

Some things were cold forged. Some were hot forged and then cold hammered to finish.

And the hammering is harder work than working iron/steel. The copper absorbs all the blow, so you don't get any "rebound" when working. And hour's worth of hammering will seem like you hammered for 2 or 3 hours!

Copper was never meant to hold and edge very long. It was just a ... different ... step up from flint/bone/wood tools. Copper was just more ... durable ... than the others. So it didn't break as easily. And you could re-sharpen it easier. So it was more of an alternative to the natural materials instead of a replacement.

Note the curve/bend on the tang of the knives compared to the blade? I forged/hammered them that way to replicate the original artifacts. But it would have been straight when first made and the handle put on. In use, the pressure you use cutting will slowly bend the blade/handle angle to that shape - over time. Something you only learn by doing.

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

p.s. Over on evil-bay, there are people offering "float copper" nuggets for sale. This is the raw copper you find out on the surface of the ground. This was the original material worked by the Indians. You might be able to get a better deal on some of it. I picked up several pounds last spring, but I still haven't gotten back to playing with it. Altho, this summer I did forge up two large door handles/pulls from copper, and covered both sides of a wood door with random sized copper sheets nailed on with brass nails. The client loved it! (sorry, I haven't gotten any pics of that door from Jay yet.)

 

[Draven]

Thanks for all the information folks

Great looking knives, Mike and John and thanks to Toddy for the contact info

I'm currently in the process of making a prototype for the athame - ironically, out of steel I cut from a circular sawblade I intend this to be fully functional, heat treated and only single-edged for ease of use. It'll be relatively small (considering the size of some Athames I've seen on the net anyway) with a blade about 4 1/2 inches long, a handle of 3 1/2 - 4 inches, and the blade about 1 3/4 inches wide at its broadest point. Might be a bit unorthodox to make a prototype for a copper knife out of carbon steel, but I figured that it could give my fiancee an idea of what she wants as far as the Athame's size is concerned, as well as giving me a new toy!

Due to the size of the sawblade, it'll only be half-tang (maybe even a little less...) but I'm not planning on it being a heavy-use knife anyway - just for a bit of food prep and light carving.

I shall post pics when I've finished roughing out the blade shape Might even get a wee Ulu of the same blade, I've been wanting one for a while

PS: I forgot to ask something

What is difference between cold forging and hot forged? Is the cold forging done by just heating and quenching the copper to work it cold, and hot forging is done by working the copper hot, or something similar? Sorry for the ignorance, but I've spent most of my time researching knife making looking at ferrous metals...

 

[Mike Ameling]

Hot forging copper works pretty much just like hot forging iron or steel. You just have a lot narrower range of temps to work with. If you heat copper up till it just starts to turn red, that is the forging temp. Any hotter and it will suddenly melt into a puddle. But at that red temp, it will move pretty easily. Be careful not to hit it too hard - until you get used to it. And you can hammer that copper for a long time after it starts cooling down. You will ... feel ... when it's starting to need to be heated back up again. It will "work harden" and become "stiffer" under your hammer. If you hammer too long as it cools down, it can and will crack on you.

And if you work it cold, you have to Anneal it more often. Heat it up to red temp, then quench in water. As you hammer it cold, you will start to feel it stiffening up as it "work hardens". Just be careful about working it too long between annealing.

After I was done hot forging those pieces, I heated them back up and let them air-cool. That's the method of heat-treating copper. It doesn't do much, though. I then lightly cold hammered them to add in some more Work Hardening. But there's not much you can do to harden copper - without alloying in some other metals like tin. But that turns it into bronze or brass.

So I decided to work my copper HOT. It just helped control the forging better that way, and I also didn't have to worry about work-hardening it too much. But that "dead blow" while working copper sure took its toll on my arm muscles. One hour's work seemed like 3 hour's worth of hard hammering!

Good luck on your project.

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

p.s. I still have a full Colonial era copper knife blade forge up and ready to put a handle on. It's part of a Cannon Crew's tools. They often used a copper knife to help avoid any sparks that might set off the black powder.

 

[Ben Trout]

Let me know what size copper you are after. There are two companies in our works and 'the other side' makes electric motor commutators. They have lots of copper bar of narrow isosceles trapezium section (blunt wedge shaped). They generate loads of scrap so I can get you a few bars and much of the rough shaping is already done.

 

[Draven]

thanks Mike, exactly what I wanted to know

Ben - PM sent

Cheers folks

 

[Hedgehog]

Also look up your local metal reclaimation yard, I buy all my copper & Brass from mine. You can take a hacksaw & cut off what you want, they charge you by weight & usually round down the price ime. They are cheap too.

 

[Draven]

Also look up your local metal reclaimation yard, I buy all my copper & Brass from mine. You can take a hacksaw & cut off what you want, they charge you by weight & usually round down the price ime. They are cheap too.

I dunno if there are any nearby but I'll ask around - there should be, we have car scrapyards and more industrial estates than necessary so i don't see why not Cheers!