knifemaking thread

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Not needed. That's short enough you'll probably need to epoxy it in place though. I'd suggest lengthening it by grinding the bolster shorter, that'll give you another half inch, which should be plenty.

1. Grind. Wrap blade with damp rag while doing this to prevent heat transmission up the blald and ruining the temper.
2. Make handle.
3. Clean handle and blade with acetone, to remove any natural resins from the wood surface that will interfere with the glue.
4. Pin + Epoxy.

Should work fine.

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Do i have to heat treat/forge the blade when making a small folding knife?

>>1202028
yes.

only exception to that is if you have sourced pre-heat-treated, hardened and tempered steel stock.

(which is rare as fuck, and will be specified as such. Normally, as something like "pretreated 10XX strip stock 56HrC, (dimensions)" is the description for that. "strip stock (dimensions) or anything like that is by default delivered in a untreated state.

All knives will requite heat-treat to take from a good steel stock to a usable blade.

>>1202041
now, that said, do you need to forge a blade? no.

Assuming your steel is delivered in sheet, strip, or "ground flat stock", you can shape it while annealed by filework, belt sander, or similar grinding methods, to make a blade.

Forging is not the only method of shaping steel, it is the traditional one, but its not a prerequisite. it is needed for some processes, for example if your chosen stock only comes in round bar, you may want to forge it to a flat strip. if you're making something like a sword crossguard that has a knuckle-bow, you may want to forge to reduce the amount of wastage. but if its a straight blade, you can take flat rectangular stock straight from the foundry, grind it to shape, and then heat-treat with no forging. in fact, for a beginner, it will probably make a better knife.

>>1202028
now since you said "heat treat/forge" that sounds like you assume they're interchangeable. they're not. Words have very precise, technical meanings in this sort of work - heat treatment is vry much a science, even when blademaking is an arts/craft skill. So, a very short glossary for you:

Shaping processes:
Shaping by heating material and impact pressure - by hammer, press, rolling, etc are "forging" processes. Almost all forging processes are done hot, at least outside of heavy industry.
Shaping by material removal - Grinding, filing, sanding, sawing etc are "stock removal" processes. almost all blades are ground after forging to some degree.


Hot work processes:
"Forging" - shaping when hot - as above.
"Annealing" - the process of heating to a critical temperature, (the exact temp depends on the choice of steel, but generally glowing orange, at which point the steel is non-magnetic when the carbon and other elements in it go into a solid solution.) then cooling very gradually over a long duration, to make the steel soft and easily workable.
"Normalising" - the process of heating to close or over a critical temperature and allowing to cool naturally. used to refine the grain structure after long periods of forging.

"Heat-treatment" comprises of two stages:
"quenching" is heating material above the critical temperature, at which point it is rapidly cooled, normally by plunging into oil, sometimes into water, clamping between two plates, or by a jet of cold air. Quenching makes the steel very hard, but also makes it brittle, by freezing it in a specific crystalline state, called "Martensite."
A brittle material can easily break if bent or stressed, so quenched steel is "tempered" - re-heating the steel to a lower temp (usually about 200-280C for 30-60 minutes.), tempering converts some of the martensite into a softer type, called Bainite or Austentite. A little of this makes it springy and resilient instead of brittle.