Interesting video of a young man making a knife from a railroad spike. He really needs to wear some safety glasses though. Reading through the comments, he explains many details that are not shown in the video.

See the video here.

Cool effect, but a worthless knife. For all that work, I'd have gone to a leaf spring, as others recommended.

As far as safety goes, he's lucky he has his skin still. Kids these days.

Good skills, bad practices, and wasted effort.

spike knives are OK, but more of a souveneir item, as the steel isn't that good (or at least what they say on the knifemaking list). They do say that pandrol clips (used to hold rail down on welded rail) make very good knives, as they are a fairly high carbon alloy

http://www.pandrol.com/html/products/eclip.htm

Railroad spikes are something like 1050 IIRC. A bit soft for a really good knife though still usable. Then again, starting with a RR spike you are pretty limited as to what kind of blade you can forge so I'm not sure it's worth the hassle.

Aside from the safety issues, give the kid break. He is learning a skill and making a little bit of money from it also. The knife may not be used on a daily basis and looks to be more of a ornamental / conversation piece but regardless A++ for effort.

Safety issues aside, I think it is wonderful to see a kid who is inspired to create.

Putting effort into something like this rather than working on a higher video game score gets an A+ from me.

Thanks for posting.

Agreed. I just want to see the young fellow stay healthy and maybe receive some reward for his effort. Iron spikes may just be good practice for him.

I think he showed great skill. I would have liked to have seen him wear goggles too.

But his knives are better than any that I have ever made.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a blacksmith, at least by hobby, since he has a day job and we have been planning on making some knives and doing some mods on machetes. I was planning on making a knife out of a really old file from my late dad's tools. I figure it would be a good skill to learn and the knife would be meaningful to me in numerous ways.

I bought a spike knife years ago. It was hollow ground and the spines on every one in the batch were curved.Yes, it was at best a fun example of blacksmithing and I casually gifted it to this girl into J.R.R. Tolkien who loved the twisted handle with the black scale still present and the handy hammer but for cracking nuts.She was a vegan too.
I put a salutary edge on it for the last time and watched her go off to Middle earth, or somewhere thereabouts in Big Sur.
I heard through the grapevine some transient tried to assault her.
She really railroaded him with that thing!

Hmm, I always kinda figured Middle Earth was somewhere near Manchester. Then I heard something about it being in New Zealand. Now I find out was right under my nose in Big Sur. Oh well, I had my fill of elves long ago.