Original subtitles

I've spent the last two months working

on this $7,000 dagger

whoa what you're about to see is the

result of 27 hours of footage all

condensed into this full dagger

[Music]

build we're going to start with

1084 15 and 20 1084 15 and 20 all the

way through I go ahead and use the

welder to weld all the pieces together

on the ends get a handle on it and then

throw it into the forge we're going to

be heating this Billet up to 2200 de

F you can kind of think of Damascus

making similar to taking two different

colors of Play-Doh and combining them

together let's say you take a red layer

and a blue layer combine those together

draw the Billet out into a long piece

cut it up restack it you multiply your

layers every time you do that if you

continue that process over and over

again you'll have many hundreds or even

thousands of red layers and blue layers

of PLO Damascus making is very similar

the 1084 steel will become the dark

steel that you see in the Finish knife

and the 15 and 20 will be the bright

steel that you see in the Finish knife

giving that nice bright and dark

contrast the main difference here with

Plato and Damascus The Playdoh you can

work cold and steel you've got to work

hot

[Music]

once I'm done forging the Billet out I

let it cool down grind all the scale off

and add some markings cuz the next thing

I'm going to do is cut this Billet up

into some smaller pieces and now we

pretty much just repeat what we did on

the initial Billet so now I'm going to

make this piece mirror the first one so

I just fold it over like that and then I

take the other one stack it on there now

those lines mirror each other throughout

the Billet

I weld the Billet up at a handle and get

this thing back in the

[Music]

Forge I've got the Billet all sealed up

all the way around got the handle welded

back to it I'm going to get it in the

Forge heated up to about 2300 de and

then I'll take it out and set the forge

welds

[Music]

as I'm forging the Billet I love

watching the scale that forms and then

falls off the outside edges the 40 ton

hydraulic press my dad and I built makes

quick work of the Damascus Billet the

Press quickly Forge welds the entire

Billet making it so all those individual

layers are now one

piece that's as much as we need to forge

the Billet for this stage I'm going to

let that cool down and we can go prepare

our straight layer Billet to add two do

this for our straight layer Billet I'm

going to use five pieces of 16in 15 and

20 four pieces of 1/4 in 1084 and two

pieces of 3/8 in

1084 just like with our last two Forge

welding sessions I weld the outside of

the buet up and then get it in the Forge

[Music]

you might be asking yourself why I'm

making two separate billets and not one

big Billet my reason for this is that I

want to combine two different types of

billets that have different patterns in

them into one bigger Billet later on so

this Billet is the straight layer Billet

and the first Billet we worked on has

these distorted W layers I think when we

combine both billets together it'll be a

really cool pattern

I let the straight layer Billet cool

down and then I ground the forge scale

off of one of the two flat sides we're

going to put a piece of the straight

layer Billet on each side of the W layer

[Music]

Billet I bet you're getting used to it

by now but once again we go ahead and

weld the Billet up on the outside and

get it in the Forge

[Music]

I let the Billet soak for a little bit

of extra time because it's so

big I also have it a nice piping hot

2300

de I do a process called res squaring

this is where I tip the Billet up on a

45° angle and smash the corners in I do

that from all four corners and that

makes it so the pattern goes across the

Billet on a 45° angle instead of going

straight across the Billet res squaring

is a key ingredient in making a bunch of

really cool Mosaic Damascus

patterns I forg the bar down into about

a 1 and a/4 in square piece let it cool

down and then angle grind all the scale

[Music]

off once that's done I cut the bar up

into four equal length pieces and then I

go ahead and do a quick feric chloride

etch on the end of the pieces so we can

see how our pattern is developing here's

how the pattern looks on the end of our

Mosaic Billet I think it looks super

super cool really flamy here in the

middle keep in mind this pattern is

going to look dramatically different

once we twist it up tight

[Applause]

I go ahead and seal our four pieces of

buildup with the welder add a handle to

the Billet and get it back in the Forge

this time to set the forge welds from

every direction instead of using my

regular flat dyes I'm using some dieses

made from angle iron the angle iron D is

push in on all four sides of the Billet

at the the same time forcing the seams

on all four sides of the Billet to forge

weld nice and tightly closed after

setting the welds I move back to my

regular drawing dies and begin drawing

the Billet out into a nice long piece

[Music]

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and now it's time to begin twisting up

this Billet super tight when I'm done

twisting up this Billet I want the

outside of it to look like it's a

threaded bolt even though it's heated up

to 2,200 de the 3/4 in bar of Damascus

steel puts up a lot of resistance as

soon as the Billet starts to cool down a

little bit twisting becomes nearly

impossible and I have to get the Billet

back into the forge for another heat and

more twisting

that's looking better to me it looks

pretty consistent from here to like here

for now I'm going to flip it around and

do the exact same thing we just did on

that end only on this end here twisting

in the opposite

direction the reason I'm twisting both

halves of the bar in different

directions is so that later on when we

combine two bars that will create our

blade we'll end up with kind of a Shevon

type pattern going down the blade I use

the hydraulic press as a giant clamp to

hold the end of the bar while I twist up

the rest of it I try to only clamp a

small area on the end of the bar because

wherever you're clamping you won't be

able to twist and that'll end up as

scrap later on or maybe part of the Tang

of the knife either way I don't want to

waste more steel than I have to so I

just grab a little bit of it after being

satisfied with how tightly the bar is

Twisted I heat the bar up and Forge it

back into a square

shape both of the three in bars look

beautiful the twists are really nice and

similar and they match up very well the

pieces came out about the same length

I'm going to tack weld these together in

a couple of places so we can heat up

this end and bend it to form our tip

[Applause]

shape I'm forging a curve on to the end

of both bars at the same time this will

allow me to put both bars together and

make it so the pattern in our Damascus

actually curves and follows the edge of

the blade and comes together at the

tip once I'm happy with how I've curved

the tip of the bars I use the die

grinder to cut those temporary welds

loose and separate our two individual

pieces then I take the bars outside and

use my 5 horsepower 9in angle grinder to

knock off all the scale and and kind of

clean the bars up a

[Music]

bit next up is to use the band saw to

cut off the excess material from where I

curved the bars up there's a big chunk

of material that needs to get out of the

way so we can put both bars back to back

when I'm Forge welding a Billet like

this together I like to make what I call

a sheath because right now we can forge

weld all of this area under the

hydraulic press but it's not going to

hit on this area because it's got quite

a bit of a taper to it so by making a

little sheath to fill in this area we'll

be able to forge weld everything

together in the hydraulic press and have

it all pressed down at the same time

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

once I'm done welding the Billet

together it's time to get this back in

the Forge get it piping hot and gently

set our Forge welds you can actually see

that sheath Mater material towards the

tip of the blade now maybe you'll get a

better idea why I wanted that sheath

material at the tip the Press is good at

Forge welding the flat areas of the bar

but if I didn't have the sheath material

towards the tip it would be very hard to

forge weld the tip and press everything

down nice and evenly Without Really

adding in a bunch of

[Music]

[Music]

distortion I think I got it pretty

straight we won't know for certain until

later for now I'm going to go ahead and

Forge out the Tang of the

[Music]

blade at this point I need to be very

careful when controlling my hydraulic

press so I'm hyperfocused on making sure

that I don't accidentally twitch or

press down the foot pedal a little too

long and end up with a two-piece blade

instead of a onepiece blade

[Music]

once I'm done forging out the Tang I let

the Billet cool down slowly and then I

prepare the wheel in my Surface grinder

I'm about to surface grind a lot of

material away from both sides of our

Damascus blade currently the the blade

is about 3/4 of an inch thick I want to

grind about 1/4 of an inch off of each

side of the blade

I got the blade thin down to

270,000 of an inch thick I also went

over it with a 320 grip belt and then

left it in the feric chloride for a few

minutes just so we could see how the

Damascus pattern is looking now is

finally the time to remove this sheet

material I'm going to use a Sharpie and

just lightly Mark around the mild steel

I can see it because we etched it and

we're going to band saw off all that

material

there we don't want any of the sheath

material in the final knife blade

because it's made from mild steel not

high carbon steel like the rest of our

blade so that sheath material won't

harden up properly and it won't hold an

edge properly either while I'm at the

grinder I think I'll go ahead and

profile the rest of the blade and shape

our tang and get it cleaned up a little

bit

too this knife's finally starting to

look like a dagger now that we've got

the tang ricasso and blade roughed in

I'm loving the way this looks I think

the Damascus pattern is also super cool

and it's just going to keep getting

cooler as we grind in those blade bevels

let's get the blade into the Heat

Treating oven it's already up to like,

1400° right now I'm going to let it come

up the rest of the way to temperature

1525 and then let the blade soak for

about 5

minutes okay here we go grabbing the

Tang of the blade and the

quinch okay that's probably good enough

it's barely barely smoking now I'm going

to stick it in the oven for 2 hours at

425° now that this Blade's been

normalized hardened and tempered the

Heat Treating process is pretty much

finished so for now I want to start

profiling this blade I rough profiled

the blade earlier when I ground away

that sheath material matal but now I'm

really fine-tuning it making sure that

the tip of the blade and the sides of

the blade are nice and

[Music]

symmetrical once I'm done profiling the

blade I mount it up in my milling

machine I use my milling machine to cut

in a fer sometimes known as a blood

groove on both sides of the blade

after Milling in the Fuller I sand the

Fuller for this I'm using a drill a tiny

brass rod with a slot on the end of it

and some sandpaper wrapped around

it after finishing up the Fuller it's

time to grind in our Edge bevels I use a

sharp super coarse 36 grit belt to hog

away the material at first as I grind I

switch it up to finer and finer grit

belts as I near completion of the bevel

grinding process

[Music]

now it's time to transition from

grinding The Edge bevels to hand sanding

The Edge bevels I want to keep

everything as crisp and clean as I can

as I'm hand sanding because sometimes

hand sanding can have a tendency of

rounding over your crisp lines and

making things look less defined this

will keep my sandpaper nice and flat and

help me keep everything just a little

bit more crisp and clean as I hand

sand the blade is almost at the stage

where I move on and start working on the

guard and handle there's just one other

thing we got to finish up and that's the

ricasso and part of finishing up the

ricasso is putting on my maker

[Music]

Mark I'm going to be etching in my maker

Mark with electricity I've got a DC

current running through this electrode

the electricity eats away at the steel

leaving a nice deep maker Mark that's

never going to rub off

[Music]

let's Jump Right In and start on the

guard I already cut a chunk of Steel to

make the guard out of now we can Chuck

this up in the milling machine and

remove this material right here I'm

going to remove it all the way down

something like

[Music]

this I've got the milling machine

turning very fast right now and using

this large 3/4 in Cutter it was actually

throwing some very hot 5 100° chips

right on my hands as I was turning the

knobs sometimes I start with a big block

of steel and then remove material with

the mill and grinders until it looks

like a guard and sometimes I like to

forge the guards to shape it kind of

just depends Pro to project on this

project I wanted to start with a good

siiz block and then just grind and Mill

away stuff until it looks like the guard

on my sketch that I'm

following my dad set up a digital

readout for the milling machine which

makes operations like this so much

easier and quicker

now I'm using my high-speed Dental bur

it's kind of like a Dremel tool but

instead of only turning at 35,000 RPM it

turns at

320,000 RPM

[Music]

I like to hammer my guards on for a nice

tight

fit at this point we're done fitting the

guard and we can move on to profiling

the guard more in this direction cuz

right now these are pretty chunky on the

sides and I want to start getting the

actual profile of the Guard nailed down

before we move on to the rest of the

fittings I start by giving myself some

layout lines to follow and then I move

over to the milling machine to square up

the ends of the Guard if I have the ends

of the Guard square and symmetrical to

each other it'll make shaping at the 2

x72 a lot

[Music]

easier after profiling the guard I want

to fit the front spacer fitting the

front spacer is the same as what I did

on the guard only I want it to fit

slightly looser I don't want it to

Wibble wobble around but I do want to be

able to have it fit nicely but yet be

able to take it off without hammering on

the end of the Tang quite so hard I

messed with the fit up of the front

spacer a little bit and here's how it

fits up against the guard it does go on

and off very easy but like I said it

doesn't wobble at all so that's very

good next thing we need to do is lay out

the uh shape of the Tang on the block of

wood so we can start making the slot in

the wood for the

[Music]

[Applause]

Tang next we're moving on to the handle

I need to make about a 3 and 1/2 in Long

slot in this piece of wood in order to

accommodate the rest of the Tang

[Music]

big shout out to my buddy korin in

Australia I love this cutter he gave me

it cuts away the woods so quickly so

clean and smoothly it leaves a very nice

flat surface and makes fitting my

handles a little bit easier next I need

to turn the slot into an actual

rectangular slot cuz right now it still

has rounded sides from the round drill

bits so to do this I use one of my

homemade brooches it's just a little

scraper that has one tooth on the

[Music]

end now that the handle fits to the

blade properly I want to add some lineup

pins between the front spacer and handle

material the lineup pins will make it so

the handle locates back to the exact

same place every single time

I like to start by drilling my lineup

pin holes in the front

[Music]

spacer once the holes are established in

the front spacer I can use CA glue to

glue the wood portion of the

handle and then take that entire

assembly off and use those established

holes in the front spacer to then drill

down into the wood that way everything

lines up properly and the handle and

front spacer fit on the knife together

with just a little bit of heat the ca

loses its strength and I can lightly tap

the front spacer off clean the CA glue

and add my lineup pins next we'll see

how the front spacer fits with the wood

oh beautiful I know you couldn't feel

that but it had a nice amount of a

resistance when I slid that on there

that's about perfect there's one more

thing I like to do while the knife's at

this stage and that is is to bed the

handle in

epoxy with the bedding process we're

going to fill the handle up with a

highquality epoxy we're going to coat

the Tang of the knife in Vaseline so the

epoxy won't stick to it and then

assemble the entire knife and let the

epoxy cure this will make it so we get

100% contact and a nice fit between the

inside of the handle and the Tang of the

knife

blade try to put it straight in there

and we've got epoxy starting to come out

already that's looking

[Music]

good tomorrow now that the handle's

bedded in epoxy it's ready to go for

shaping

once I get the handle profiled and

thinned down to the right thickness I

then begin shaping the outside edges of

the handle I don't want the sides of the

handle to be flat I want them to have a

nice sculpted kind of rounded feel to

the

[Music]

them after shaping and sanding the

handle I now know the final shape of the

handle so I can transfer that onto my

front spacer and go ahead and continue

shaping that front spacer down to its

final

[Music]

shape the last thing to shape on the

guard are the two quillians the part

that sticks out on the two ends these

are still really wide and we want to

shape those down and give them a nice

taper I like to wait to shape the sides

of my guard down until after the handle

is shaped the reason being I never

really know exactly how thick my

handle's going to be and I like to base

the thickness of the Guard or the width

of the Guard off of how thick the handle

[Music]

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course now that the handle and fittings

are completely shaped it's time to do

our Platinum inlay

[Music]

[Music]

the next step is to dovetail our grooves

the dovetails will hold the platinum in

place mechanically

[Music]

[Music]

it's

[Music]

[Music]

here's how the Platinum inlay looks

after sanding everything down nice and

flush with some 320 grit the inlay looks

nice and we're done with it on the front

spacer let's move on to the guard

here's how the finished Platinum inlay

looks on the guard and front spacer

there's one more embellishment to add

and that's the small rounded Groove that

goes around the front

spacer I'm using a chainsaw file to cut

in this round Groove and I'm trying to

be very careful to not slip outside of

my groove if I slip I'm going to put

some really deep gashes right on the

surface of the front spacer right across

the platinum and I'm going to try to

avoid that at all

[Music]

oras I go around the front spacer

several times with the file slowly

fine-tuning how it looks and adjusting

it to get it as close to perfect as I

can once that's done I WRA sandpaper

around my file and hand sand the

groove here's how the decorative Groove

looks after doing 320 and 600

[Music]

grit here's the handle after rubbing on

it with the sunshine cloth for a few

minutes I think it looks very nice it's

very shiny we are done working on the

handle now until the rest of the knife

is finished and we've got the handle

glued up now that the handle's buffed I

want to move on to finishing out the

[Music]

blade I'm going to wash the blade off

really well with Dawn dish soap and some

warm water and a

sponge got the blade cleaned off I'm

going to go ahead and put it in the

feric chloride

mixture it's been about a minute let's

take it out and see how it

looks

whoa oh I love the pattern it's so fine

but there's definitely something

different about it compared to a

standard W twist it's been about 7

minutes total I'm going to take the

blade out rinse it off and then we're

going to get it neutralized

[Music]

here's how the blade looks after coffee

darkening it I had it in the coffee

solution for just over 6 hours if you

look closely the entire blade has a

little bit of a yellowish tint to it

especially on the 15 and 20 parts of the

steel we want to take care of that

yellowish tint now cuz I don't want to

leave it yellow I want to brighten that

steel up to a nice silvery color so my

trick for doing that is to use Sunshine

[Music]

cloth for the fin final stage of etching

and coffee darkening we're going to be

doing a caruba wax finish on the

[Music]

blade let's try the wax I think the

blade should be pretty warm

now oh

yeah get it down on that Fuller first

[Music]

I love how everything came out the etch

came out nice the coffee darkened finish

came out really nice and the wax on top

of it all looks really good so we have a

nice shiny blade that also has a pretty

durable finish helping to protect the

carbon steel there's one more thing

we've got to finish before we can put

this whole knife together and that's the

fittings they currently have a 600 grit

finish on them we need to sand these

fittings up to 3,000 grit get them

buffed and then do the gun bluing finish

on them to turn them nice and jet black

and make that Platinum inlay

pop the gun bluing process reflects any

finish that you have on your metal so if

you have random stray scratches you're

going to see those even more prominent

after the gun blowing so I'm doing my

best to finish these fittings out with a

beautiful clean mirror finish without

random stray scratches

[Music]

here are the fittings after doing the

two-stage buffing I think they came out

beautifully they have a nice mirror

finish and are ready for gun

[Music]

blowing going to go ahead and get the

front spacer into

the cleaning solution

here next step we'll get get the guard

clean and get it in the

[Music]

solution okay once you put it in you got

to keep it in

there bend that wire over I need to turn

the heat up a little bit cuz it kind of

slowed down from the

boil the guard's been in the cleaner for

6 or 7 minutes now we can go ahead and

take it out into the bling salts

it's not living that okay that was a

perfect depth heat up up up up it's been

about 8 minutes we can go ahead and take

out the front spacer I'm going to take

it out rinse it off with some running

water and then get it into the boiling

water right

away oh boy look at get that it sure

looks good when it's wet I've said it

before and I'll say it

again wow it sure looks good when it's

wet like

[Music]

that I let the fittings sit in the water

displacing oil overnight and then took

them out of the oil and cleaned the oil

off so we could see how the bluing looks

I've inspected the parts all the way

around and couldn't really find any

imperfections in the bluing so I think

we're good to go the bluing looks

amazing on both pieces everything is

almost ready to do the final glue up

assembly there's one more thing though

that'll be a little bit easier to do now

than it will be after the handle's all

glued on and that is to get the blade

sharpened I'm going to start all the way

back here at the base of the edge and

then go all the way down the blade to

the

tip if you're wondering why I have the

blade covered with Scotch office tape

well it's because I want to protect the

Damas us I don't plan on laying this

blade down too flat as I'm sharpening it

but just in case I lay it down too flat

or I end up like hitting it with the

side of the belt or something I don't

want to scratch up our beautiful

Damascus finish I finished the

sharpening process out with a leather

belt that has some buffing compound

applied to it this will leave a nice

shiny Edge that's very sharp

[Music]

[Music]

now I can take a popsicle stick and

start stirring this epoxy up really

well and I'll add a little bit more for

the front

spacer add the front spacer on next I

want to cover the tang in

epoxy next up we'll go ahead and fill

the handle up from the

[Music]

inside should start to see epoxy just

oozing out all over the

place and tip it up this way so the

epoxy coming out right here doesn't run

up into this taped off area we wouldn't

want

[Music]

that and take this back to the bench and

continue cleaning up all the excess

[Music]

epoxy it's the next day the epoxy has

secured and I removed the entire knife

from the handle clamping jig I also went

ahead and covered up the guard front

spacer and the rest of the blade with

quite a few layers of tape because we're

about ready to do the pins in the handle

once these pins are in the handle this

knife will be

finished I start by Redd drilling the

holes in the handle because they filled

with epoxy and we need to drill all that

out the pins I'm adding in are solid

Platinum to match the Platinum inlays

instead of doing flush pins with this

handle I'm doing d pins so the head of

the pin will actually stick up above the

surface of the handle material a little

bit I form a small head on the pin using

the hammer kind of think of it like an

old-fashioned rivet you're going have

these little tiny rivet heads holding

the pin in place on each side of the

handle I clean up the heads of the pins

with sandpaper Scotch prite Wheels

buffing wheels all that kind of stuff

[Music]

[Music]

is

[Music]

and just like that the Catalyst dagger

is finished I love how this dagger came

out this is definitely the most

elaborate boot dagger I've ever done

before some of my favorite things about

this dagger are the Damascus pattern

that Mosaic twist came out really

awesome I love the finish on the gun

blued steel fittings with Platinum inlay

the Platinum inlay looks a little more

subtle than the gold inlay but I think

it still looks very nice and I'm happy

that I was able to inlay that Platinum

after how hard I found the wire to be I

also think the died and stabilized

handle came out beautiful it's got a

super lustrious shine on it and I love

the domed Platinum pins these pins are

so small and delicate compared to my

normal 16in pins and I think they add a

nice Touch of Elegance to this dagger

especially since this dagger is pretty

small itself to wrap up my last favorite

thing about this dagger is the blade

shape and profile not only the profile

this way but the profile this direction

as well I love how much of a taper I

ended up grinding into the blade it

starts out pretty thick and chisel like

here and then it tapers out nice and

thin to the tip overall with the

thickness and size of the blade it's

really got that Vibe I was going for I

wanted this real stabby kind of vibe

when you're holding it uh it's not a

super thin light cutter it's definitely

got this kind of chisel like stabby

Stout Vibe going on and I absolutely

adore that I will see you in the next

video May the forge be with you bye-bye