Blacksmith Forged Titanium Knife

Randy McDaniel shows the forging of a titanium knife. Edited down to show the main points in order to fit in less than the 10 minute format. After showing how he forged a titanium sword on YouTube a lot of comments were received about this material and how it is forged and how it holds up. Hopefully this will clear up some of the myths of this material and allow people to have fun with it.

Tal Harris adds: titanium will burn if you get the heat high enough. It especially likes to react with iron scale in a gas furnace at high temperatures. Putting water on burning titanium is not good. Baking soda is the preferred extinguisher. A class D fire extinguisher is a good thing to have around. When water is applied to a titanium fire, the reaction disassociates the hydrogen from the oxygen, thus making a bigger fire in an uncontrolled manner. The grinding dust will also burn.

There are also quite a few alloys of titanium, some with phase changes at certain temperatures and some without. This can make a BIG difference on how the piece reacts to forging. Knowing what businesses there are in your area could give clues as to what alloy you are finding. Chemical processing equipment frequently uses CP or commercially pure titanium. Aerospace applications get into other alloys with 6-4 (6% aluminum-4% vanadium) being the most common.

WARNING: Forging, knife making, titanium and all of the shown operations are dangerous and should not be done with out proper training and the supervision of a knowlegable adult.
See more of Randy's shop and works at
www.drgnfly4g.com

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• knife
• sword
• blacksmith
• dragon
• forge
• how-to
• demo
• titanium
• fun
• hammering
• hot
• metal
• art
• sculpture
• arts
• crafts

[lcusatis]

Annealing? Heat treating?

[drgnfly4g]

@lcusatis No. There's no carbon so no heat treating. It does toughen up some to quinch when hot, but I usually don't worry about it as it's tough enough on its own.

[Fuzzllmao]

awesome.. it looks so easy in the cutted vid. how long does it take in real time?

[drgnfly4g]

@Fuzzllmao Bit more than an hour. Heating takes up a lot of time.

[chieffy35]

how did you make your touchmark? i would like to make my own for my knives

[drgnfly4g]

@chieffy35 Hot chiseled a mirror image of it into a piece of straightened coil spring and hardened and tempered it.

[ArtOfSelfReliance]

I have a nice outdoor forge set up ...its pretty a medevil style blacksmith post...been using nothing but leaf springs to work on...would love to work with titanium...awesome video man...dont let anyone talk shit on a dying art...we would be the most important people if a EMP ever went off...or economic collapse....

[SMGJohn]

Now forge a Katana in Diamond!

[jeremy0o0o0]

this video has alot more like than the first one! :D lmao nice work

[huntercarbino]

the attack with the 6lb hammer was awesome

i have only ever worked with carbon steels

and now have seen the light regarding titanium. what sort of prices do you pay for your scrap pieces of titanium ?

[dwayne5495]

@ArtOfSelfReliance dude your so right im only 18 and have no idea how to forge but i have the up most respect for blacksmiths you guys are so talanted and you should keep doing it dont let it die off man!

[TheAwsomeIdiot]

i want to be a smith some day

[tod3k]

@someramdomguy99 Aprox 1000$ more than those guys can afford!