There are some beautiful American knives in the late 18th c., and I wanted to see if I could adapt Atlanta Cutlery's large Scottish dirk blade ($18) for a relatively plain project inspired by those knives. This is what I came up with. This is my first attempt at a ferrule, and it's not great--my soldering is still ridiculously poor. The rest is pretty rough-and-ready, too, but it's solid and feels good in the hand. The factory edge is no edge at all, unfortunately, so the homely secondary bevel is all me. As usual, the AC blade proved to be a fun, cheap and relatively quick project, if not really historically accurate. I believe this blade is meant to represent a regimental pattern of the late 19th c., so it might be just right for one of those.

NOTE: Some of you probably know that I typically model hilts in clay--that's what you see on the anvil in the first image below. Note, also, that this old 25# Harbor Freight anvil also seems to be made of clay. There are new HF anvils that are harder, apparently.

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Looks good! I like it! Are you going to make a sheath for it?

not for this one, but if i did it would be an appropriately plain version of the sheath for the exceptional knife shown below

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For another source for blades there is Crazy Crow:
https://www.crazycrow.com/knife-blades

Under the Hand-Forged High Carbon Steel Knife Blades section there is a Scottish Dirk blade for $35 that appears somewhat older in design than the 19th century offering from ACC.

Yes! I used CC rifleman blades for the three historical treatments below and would love to get another for a Bauernwehr project. They also have an impressive Alabama D-guard knife for a great price. very tempting. caveat—with anything less than a fine polish, the blades below showed areas that reacted to chemical bluing or rusting in ways different from the surrounding steel. not a degreasing problem, because the difference goes right through the blade—symmetrical. i suspect something to do with heat treatment, but could be an artifact of forging(?).

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Looks great! What kind of wood and finish did you use for the grip on the dirk blade?

I'm a little iffy about the Crazy Crow 5450 blades even though I've used them in several projects, 'cause they're cottage-made and the steel content and hardness supposedly vary from batch to batch. They can make some really good-looking knives, though.

The wood is oak, dyed with Fiebings black leather dye, and rubbed with the soft beeswax you can get at Walmart for waterproofing shoes. Seems to work fine, but i don’t know deep or durable the finish might be.

All of these rifleman blades are hard enough i had to anneal the tangs before modifying. even with a drill press and appropriate bit, just too hard otherwise. Windlass blades are the same, but possibly more consistent in manufacture.