This is a picture of only 1 of the many many knives that my husband has made. It is made from a piece of tool steel that he hammered out in his coal forge. He hears the steel up and beats it out and repeats the process many times. Till the steel takes the shape and thickness that he desires. After that he cleans up the edges with his belt sander till the lump of steel is completely transformed into a blade. Then he takes that blade which is now called a blank, and places it back into the fire and takes it out to let it cool. He repeats this process till he is confident that the steel is ready to be hardened, but before he hardens it he drills holes in the handle for later use. He then places the blank back into the fire to be heated to a critical temperature one last time before placing it in a qhuench tank to be hardened. At this stage the knife blank is as brittle as glass. So he takes it to an oven, hehehe not mine, but a smaller oven to be heated back up to a certain temperature for a couple of hours so that the blade can become flexible but extremely hard. At this point he has to put a handle on it. This is where the holes he drilled in the handle come in handy. He cuts brass to fit the guard and handle to the blade and a piece of black micarta for the center piece of the handle. Then goes back to work at the sander for the handle to form it to the shape required. And there you have it!! A beautiful work of custom functional art!