A couple of years ago a friend of mine on another forum was contemplating a commemorative knife to honor his uncle who had recently passed away.  His uncle was a veteran of the only land battle to take place on U.S. soil during WW II.  The battle of Attu Island.  A little known island way out on the Aleutian Island Chain.  It is actually closer to the Russian Mainland than to the U.S. mainland.  Anyhow, anyone interested in learning more about this battle can look it up on Wikipedia here Attu Island .

I volunteered to make the Damascus blade for this project.  Andy, my friend, had contacted the Coast Guard Commander stationed on Attu and was sent the base material to be used in the construction of the knife.  It was an exploded artillery  round and a rack of truck springs.  The shell was from US artillery and the truck spring is unknown as to what vehicle it came from.  SO it could be US or Japanese.  Here is a shot of the material as I received it.  



I then cut a test piece to ensure harden-ability.  Andy had done some research and found that the shells were normally made from 1080-1090 high carbon steel so I was not too worried but still wanted to make sure.  







The hardening test came out great and we decided to proceed with the project.  Next is cutting all the material





Here is the shell all reduced to workable sizes.  



Now the work really begins.  Forging all the material out for the first billet.  

(more to follow)

You are one creative fellow.

TRG

Awesome that you can get the legacy raw material.
Some approprate material for hilt/scales would be cool too.
I have a bunch of vintage micarta from my mother's husband's father.
He was an electrician at Armsco Steel during the war.
I bet they have something like that lying around on the base.

Tag

The forging begins

First get it hot then beat it out.





As you can tell the long thin pieces were the spring and the shorter oddly shaped pieces are the shell.  

Then forge into more usable shapes.  All shell in the next pic



Here is the stack getting ready to put the billet together.  I will be adding a bit of 15n20 to provide a bit of contrast.  



And now stacked into the first billet.  



Now its time to get it hot.





Then put the SQUEEZE on it.



Now it's time for lunch



More to come.  Need to get some more pics from Andy.

Thanks for the replies and offers of material.  This project was done a couple of years ago and is finished now.  As soon as I can get some more pics from Andy of the finished knife I will be able to finish this thread.  I will do some more of what I have.

Also FYI Attu Coast Guard Station was decommissioned in 2010 (IIRC).  There is no longer a presence there so this project can never be duplicated, That is unless someone breaks the law and steals material from a national monument.  All the material we had left over had to be returned.

So continuing on.  Here is the billet after the first press.



Opening it up to see how it went.



and drawing it out ready to cut and fold.



Now cut ready to re-stack



From this point it is just  a repeat of the first stack, reheat and draw again then cut and do it all over.  Until I get to 550 layers.  Then it is time to pattern.  Here is what it looks like to do a ladder pattern.  This distorts the layers and gives the wavy look.  





From this point I grind off the high spots and forge a blade.  The next photos are of the blade, finished ready to send to Andy for the handle and guard.  





Now for Andy's part.  I normally finish off all my own knives but for this project Andy took it from here.

Now Andy has the  blade and has assembled all the materials for the final product.  All the parts came from Attu except the ivory.  It came from mainland Alaska.  Still appropriate for this project.



So lets get started on the guard made from a piece of the spring. Andy hard at work.



Filing the slot



Fitting the guard



Now the plan is to use the bases from a couple of 30-06 shells in the guard obtained from Attu.





And now in place



Guard Soldered to the blade



So lets tackle the part that give us knife makers the willies.  Nothing like cutting into a $1000+ piece of ivory  to make your sphincter pucker a bit.



and handle in place for the next step.

Brilliant..!!!!!

Andy had a pretty neat idea to make this even more linked to Attu.  He wanted to cast a replica of the island in brass from the 30-06 shells used in the guard.  

The map of Attu and the wax relief he carved.



And a close up of the wax



The buttcap and 06 shell to be used



Investing the wax.



and the casting soldered to the buttcap



Cleaning it up a bit



Finished knife to follow.

Here is the knife put together.  It is not finished at this point.  Originally we had panned to have it engraved but the guard was too hard for the engrave so he passed on the project. So we opted to have it Scrimmed.  I have not seen the final knife with the scrimshaw but I am sure it is magnificent.  All this project was done by volunteers so the scrimshander had to do things as he had time available and it took a couple of years Anyhow here is a 360 of the finished knife before scrimshaw.









The base was made from the artillery shell base with a .50 cal bullet for the blade rest.  

The project is finally done and I hope to have the pictures soon.  We plan to raffle the knife off and donate all the funds to a WW II charity of some sort.  It was supposed to go to the memorial in DC but the project took to long so we missed that opportunity.  

Thanks all for looking and I hope you enjoyed the journey.

Super Awesome!! Thank you for sharing!

That looks awesome, thanks for sharing your pictures.

Wow!   That is impressive.  I am awed and humbled at your dedication and skill.  


Thank you for doing this for the WWII vets.  


If you ever get to Charlotte, first round is on me.  

Wow that's awesome.

Very cool!

WOW. You Sir, are a man among men.

Fascinating. I love seeing your posts and the neat projects you undertake.

WOW,  I finally got to see the finished product.  I am impressed.  Here are some of the pics I just received.  









I am trying to get some information on the raffle and will update if you all are interested.

Yes.



I'll take all of them.





I'm kindof joking.



 

Knocked it out of the park.

Very well done.

TRG

Just a little side note.  A large part of the reason for me making this blade was that I was stationed on Adak, another island in the Aleutian chain.  In fact it was were the battle for Attu was staged.  Just felt a little like home making the steel.  My favorite duty station.

That is wonderful!  I hope the family passes it and the stories downnfor generations to come.

Beautiful!

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That is a work of art.  Beautiful.

Amazing, thanks for sharing.

Thanks once again for all the responses.  It looks like the raffle is going to kick off in January and all monies will go to the WWII war memorial.  I will keep you all posted.