Butterfly Roses 
by
Audra Draper, MS






My friend Audra Draper is a bit of a paradox too.




First, a bit of background.

ABS is the American Bladesmith Society, which is
a prestigious organization dedicated to continuing
and advancing the art and science of forged knives.

Two techniques are commonly used to make knife blades,
Forged
and
Stock Removal.

Stock removal begins with a rectangular piece of steel
about the overall size of the desired finished knife.
The outline of the blade is cut using a saw, or a powerful 
jet of water, or even a laser beam.  The unused part
of the metal is cut away, is removed.  Then, the details
of the blade profile are cut into the piece by removing more
metal by various cutting, filing, and grinding techniques.
In stock removal methods, the process of changing that 
rectangle of steel into a shapely knife is done by
removing metal until noting is left but the blade.

Forging is different.  Forging begins with a piece of
steel that can take just about any shape, though the 
closer it is the final shape of the knife, the less work
the knifemaker has to do.  The metal is heated in
a sort of oven called a "forge" until it's malleable;
for steel, this means heating to over 2000F
(over 1100C.)  At this temperature, the metal
can be shaped by pounding it with a hammer.  The
final shape details are often added by filing or 
grinding.  But, much of the shaping is done not 
by removing metal but by moving metal around.

Forging a knife blade is not easy or clean work.
But, forging is the traditional way to make a 
knife.

Stock removal is the art of the machinist.  
A  machinist makes a part by removing metal
using a variety of cutting an grinding techniques.

Forging is, the art of the Blacksmith,
Whether making a knife blade or a horseshoe or a
cooking pan, the blacksmith gets from raw material
to finished part by heating the metal until it's
malleable and then pounding it into the desired
shape.  Traditionally, that pounding was done
by hand with hand-held hammers.  Today, 
hydraulic power hammers can do a lot of that work.
But, even with modern tools, forging is still hard
work and the owner of a forged knife should know
 that the knifemaker quite literally put hours of 
physical effort and sweat and tears into it.  It
is a very hand-made thing.

A lot of knifemakers forge knives... and many 
of them just aren't very good at it.  But, a small
group who take the matter very seriously have
passed a set of very strict and demanding tests 
prescribed by the American Bladesmith Society 
and have earned the prestigious designation of 
ABS Master Smith.