Hi guys,

I'm a long time member but not a regular poster, but hopefully that will change. I enjoy following DIY threads and now I have a few DIY projects going on which I would like to share. I'm afraid it's nothing that hasn't been done before but still if you're like me then you probably find it interesting to see how others tackle a certain task. So, I hope some will find this interesting.

A while back I got two dagger blades from Paul Binns. They were quite cheap so I didn't expect them to be brilliant but even with that in mind I was a bit disappointed. However, now I have two dagger blades to play around with without worrying too much about mucking them up.

The blade in the top of the picture is OK-ish so I will leave it alone for now but the bottom one just looks very odd. The edges are wavy and the whole thing is very unevenly ground. As a first step I want to fix the profile of the blade. Eventually I want to make a hilt similar to the daggers found in The Royal Armouries and the Bayerisches Armeemuseum. For those who aren't familiar with these daggers check out the Aunlaz dagger by Arms & Armor you can also find a review by Chad Arnow in the reviews section.

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Using a fine tipped permanent marker I drew the new profile on the blade and colored the sections which need to be ground off.

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I'm not sure yet what to do with the top one...

Ok, I'm pretty sure I removed most of the material I wanted to but it still doesn't look right. I think I want a bit of a more acute profile taper. By the way I used an angle grinder mounted on the workbench with a tool rest in front of it, effectively a disc sander to do this. A belt grinder might be better for this kind of work but I haven't got one... heyho

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Unfortunately not much to report as I didn't have time to play this past week until last night. I managed to get a bit of grinding done and I think I am happy with this blade shape. Of course now I have to regrind the bevels because removing all that material from the profile resulted in very thick edges. I'm not even sure if I will be able to do this without a belt grinder but I'll try anyway.

I was also playing around with some paper templates to get an idea of the approximate dimensions of the hilt. I think it's going to look ok as it is in the picture. Also I found a piece of scrap steel 75mm long 6mm thick at one end tapering down to 2mm and tried if I can shape it cold. It kind of worked but for the actual guard I might have to use a blowtorch to get more even "curls"...

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Looks nice! In my experience heating (even if it´s only to dark-red) helps, otherwise metal could crack. Especially if you need to re-do the shape. Looking forward to see the final thing.

Blade shape in the third post is really much better! Paper templates look good. I think you are on the right track for sure.

Thanks for the encouragement! I did most of the grinding on the bevels yesterday. It went surprisingly well once I figured out what I was doing. I regret not weighing the blade before all the grinding. I ended up removing quite a lot of material (and some of my fingertips :S), it would be interesting to see how much. I will clean up the blade and share some pics.

Have a nice weekend!

Never enough time to play... but a little progress nevertheless.

I have the blade finished to 800 grit. I might still grind the shoulders slightly but otherwise I'm quite happy with it.

I have started making the guards. I found a piece of 20 by 6mm mild steel flat bar. I already had a pretty good idea on the length I need but just to be sure I cut a piece of wire and shaped to double check.
I cut two pieces of 120mm lengths off the flat bar and milled them down to 17mm in width just because I think that width will look better... also fortunately I have access to a milling machine at work, so tasks like this are easy to do. The tapering was done on the milling machine too. To be continued...

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Hi, I hope you all are having a great weekend.

So, this is still happening, just not as fast as I would like it to but I made some progress.

I found it difficult to make the curling uniform at the end of the guards but I think this will do. I was planning to have a uniform bright finish on these but the hammering left the surface way too uneven so I will sand it down a bit to make the whole thing look smoother and then I will heat them up to give them a uniform dark grey finish. To be continued...

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I decided to go for a bright finish on the guards. Using a fine file it was fairly straightforward to blend in the surface defects and then it was just a regular sandpaper job. I also made a peen block. I'm not sure if it's appropriate but I think it looks right. Also the peening should be easier to do this way.

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Looking good, mate. With the peen block it reminds me a bit of the Thulsa Doom standard.