Tharwa Valley Forge

Welcome to the Tharwa Valley Forge

We aim to be the best knifemaking school in Australia, offering a wide range of courses and opportunities to learn and share skills. Regular classes are scheduled in a variety of topics. Since we started running classes, hundreds of people have been introduced to the art of custom knife making and successfully made their first knives.

The Tharwa Valley Forge was established in 2003 by bladesmith Karim Haddad to create high quality knives and tools, and to teach the skills necessary to do this. Karim was trained by Australia's first Master Bladesmith, Thomas Gerner, in the early 1990's in Western Australia. The Forge is located in village of Tharwa, just south of Canberra, Australia.

Courses are rated in terms of difficulty to make it easier to pick the right level. See here for more information.

Our website encourages this continual learning through sharing resources, tutorials and articles. We are always interested in feedback on how to make this site better. We hope you learn something from your visit. and come back soon and see us again.

See our photoblog site tharwavalleyforge.jux.com for some inspiration on what we do. Short updates and bits will be posted there. We are also on Facebook and Twitter (@tharwaforge).

Reflections from the Anvil - tharwavalleyforge.jux.com

We've just built a photo blog using Jux called "Reflections from the Anvil". You can find it at tharwavalleyforge.jux.com . It's an interesting platform to use, mainly for visual microblogging. It uses full screen photos and some neat effects, and it looks great on an ipad. We will use it to put up inspiting pictures and thoughts about knifemaking.

The first series of photos come from Marina Neil at the Canberra Times. Marina writes a column called "through the lens" and the Tharwa Valley Forge features in it on October 22 2011. It is always hard taking photos of yourself when working. Some outstanding shots.

Go and have a look and see what you think.

Knifemaking Steel

We stock a small range of high carbon steel (1075 and 15N20) for bladesmithing or stock removal. The steel works well under the hammer and has minimal movement in heat treatment. The steel is annealed ready for filing or grinding. This is not precision ground stock (hence the good price) so they may be slight warpage which is easily hammered or bent out.

Price is quotes per metre and will be worked out pr rata. The maximum individual length of the 2.5mm is 90 cm, and 81 cm of the 3.3mm and thicker. This is because of the original sheet size. Cutting to length is no charge. Postage/freight extra so please let us know where you are when you order. This is in limited supply so contact us now to order.

For composition and heat treating information see Properties of Carbon Steel

For full detail of sizes and prices, click the read more below.

List of sizes and prices

Name Stamp Holder for Flypress

namestamp12 I had a name stamp made up for marking my knives some time ago, but hadn't worked out a way to cleanly mark the blade. If you hold the stamp and hit it with a hammer, you often get a double mark or shadow, or one side deeper than the other. I tried a deadblow hammer, but it wan't strong enough to mark it.

After messing around unsuccessfully with a number of options I thought of using my Number 6 Flypress. Plenty of punch and control with the 6 ton hit. I made a holder for it out of some old wagon axel on the lathe. Steps for making it below, the sizing will depend on your stamp size, you'll be able to work it out.

Multiplaz 3500 Review - Cutting

The second part of the Multiplaz 3500 review is about cutting.

The cutting torch is exactly the same as the welding torch. The only difference is the fuel you put in the torch - water, just water. There are two modes MODE I - indirect arc mode and MODE II - direct arc mode. Both modes use the water to create steam around the electric arc, compressing the arc and ionising the steam. This results in a huge amount of energy released in a very small space. Each mode has six different voltage levels that regulates the amount of energy released. It's worth having a bit of a play around with the different levels and see how it affects the cut.

Anvils

We have found a great new supplier of anvils here in Canberra. Greg Greet from Red Box Products has imported some high quality cast steel anvils and is offering them at very affordable prices. They are compact, well finished and have great bounce back with the hammer. What is most impressive is the size of the deck - its wide and well shaped.