A while back I got my first Spåre knife and during my looking at his web presence I noticed that he offered courses in knife making for not that much money (considering you also get a knife). After some hesitation and a push by @1315 I finally booked a course and thus this past Thursday I went to his forge which is located just outside of the city of Örebro.
The location is beautiful in an old industrial area which is now repurposed for various smaller businesses, including an artisanal coffee roastery - great first step for starting the day with excellent coffee!
Once in the workshop and after a safety walkthrough we were given a small piece of metal each - about 80x40x8 mm of steel. This was a sandwich of a 100 layers of two Uddeholm steels, 26c3 and 15n20, that Fredrik previously had welded to these small pieces.
And a plan for action:
During the process I focused on working and not on photography (Be present in the moment! Safety third!) but basically we continued to first using a hydraulic press to create the tang, and then using the spring hammer to forge the blade, all while heating it up in the propane forge to make it malleable. Using a spring hammer on this soft metal was an amazing feeling and it took a few tries to dare to do it right - but with instructions and a little help from Fredrik with the final details, we finally had the basic shape for the bunka shape I had selected:
After this Fredrik took over for a few minutes and cut the blade to the shape according to the template. After a short lunch in the coffee place, we continued the work. Basically I did most or all of the work with hammers, heat treatment and etching myself, but Fredrik did the grind, the polish and the sharpening - both for quality reasons and for safety reasons, and at the end day I had a knife:
The handle was also premade by Fredrik, to save time.
At the end of it all, a very fun day that I’ll remember for a long time. Fredrik is an excellent teacher! For anyone that thinks about taking a course such as this, I highly recommend it! I’m still in some sort of awe when thinking about the forging of the red-hot metal in the spring hammer.
The location is beautiful in an old industrial area which is now repurposed for various smaller businesses, including an artisanal coffee roastery - great first step for starting the day with excellent coffee!
Once in the workshop and after a safety walkthrough we were given a small piece of metal each - about 80x40x8 mm of steel. This was a sandwich of a 100 layers of two Uddeholm steels, 26c3 and 15n20, that Fredrik previously had welded to these small pieces.
And a plan for action:
During the process I focused on working and not on photography (Be present in the moment! Safety third!) but basically we continued to first using a hydraulic press to create the tang, and then using the spring hammer to forge the blade, all while heating it up in the propane forge to make it malleable. Using a spring hammer on this soft metal was an amazing feeling and it took a few tries to dare to do it right - but with instructions and a little help from Fredrik with the final details, we finally had the basic shape for the bunka shape I had selected:
After this Fredrik took over for a few minutes and cut the blade to the shape according to the template. After a short lunch in the coffee place, we continued the work. Basically I did most or all of the work with hammers, heat treatment and etching myself, but Fredrik did the grind, the polish and the sharpening - both for quality reasons and for safety reasons, and at the end day I had a knife:
The handle was also premade by Fredrik, to save time.
At the end of it all, a very fun day that I’ll remember for a long time. Fredrik is an excellent teacher! For anyone that thinks about taking a course such as this, I highly recommend it! I’m still in some sort of awe when thinking about the forging of the red-hot metal in the spring hammer.