This Stainless Steel Knife Build Starts With Raw Iron Ore

Making knives at home has become a popular hobby, thanks partly to reality TV and the free time and idle hands afforded by lockdowns. Depending on how far you get into the hobby, builds can range from assembling and finishing a kit with pre-forged parts, to actual blacksmithing with a hammer and anvil. But pretty much every build includes steel from a commercial supplier.

Not this one. Rather than buy his metal from the usual sources, [Thoisoi]'s first stop was an iron mine in the Italian Alps, where he picked up a chunk of iron ore — magnetite, to be precise. Smelting one's own iron from raw ore and alloying it into steel is generally not a backyard project thanks to the high temperatures needed, a problem [Thoisoi] solved with the magic of thermite. The iron oxide and aluminum in the thermite mix react in an exceptionally exothermic manner to generate elemental iron, which under controlled conditions can be captured as a more or less pure ingot, ready for forging.

After a test with commercially obtained iron oxide, [Thoisoi] tried his pulverized magnetite. And thanks to the addition of goodies like graphite, manganese, nickel, silicon, and chromium, he was eventually able to create a sizable lump of 402 stainless steel. He turned the metal over to an actual blacksmith for rough forging; it sure seemed to act like steel on the anvil. The finished knife looks good and performs well, and the blade has the characteristic look of stainless. Not a bad result, and all at the cost of a couple of clay flowerpots.

Thanks to [Keith Olson] for this tip.