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Our quick-and-dirty single-session knife class.

The knife. One of the most basic tools known to man, ranking just above the rock. Good for scraping, slicing, chopping, skinning, peeling, harvesting, shaving, whittling, trimming, scoring, marking, carving, debarking, paring, dicing, opening and a host of other important activities. Oh, yeah...and cutting.

Knives and other edged tools have been made throughout human history, from a wide variety of materials -- flint, bone, granite, jade, obsidian, glass, ivory, wood, bronze, copper, iron, and steel. Ours are made of upcycled automotive spring steel.

In this class the student will start with a piece of high-carbon spring steel and make a small, simple, one-piece knife, suitable for cooking, eating, or general use. This class is intended for students with at least some previous experience in the smithy -- we require that the student have taken at least A Taste of Blacksmithing, and recommend Rudiments of Blacksmithing, or equivalent experience, or more. The more prior forging and heat management experience you have, the better your knife will come out. There is another class, Nothing But Knives , for those who want to skip straight to making things with edges, though we still recommend at least some prior experience.

Techniques include: straightening, drawing out, hammering high-carbon steel, twisting, flattening, annealing, filing, grinding, hardening, and tempering.

Gift Certificates for are available.

1 4.5-hour session, with a brief break.    dates&times

Instructor: Carl West
This class is no longer offered, it takes more than a single session to do anything like a proper job of making a knife. per student
Maximum 4 students, one per forge

Prerequisite:

Required: A rapid Covid test that day.
Yes, really, we're still asking for it in 2025.
It's still out there, and no fun at all.

Students should have taken at least A Taste of Blacksmithing or already have some smithing experience.

Please wear proper clothing for visiting or working in the forge:
closed toe shoes (preferably leather, preferably high-topped. Sneakers are sufficient, sandals, crocs, pumps, mules... are not), natural fiber clothing, long pants that cover the tops of the shoes.
Click here for more safety information.


Dates and Times:
If none of the dates below work for you (or are already full), we suggest you
 Add yourself to the Notification List for this class.
(The notification list gets emailed soon after classes are put on the schedule.)

This class is either:
- not upcoming on our schedule,
- or we've fallen behind in our clerical duties and not entered it in the database.
If you found it on our calendar page, we are planning to offer it on that date.

If you're interested in taking Simple and it's not on the calendar, please tell us using our Notification-List Page.

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