Description

When I am at the beach I tend to pick up and bring away any rusty pieces of steel, partly to clean up the beach and help keep Vancouver Island beautiful, and also just in case they may become the inspiration for a piece of metal art. A real find is a piece of wrought iron, an old type of iron that declined steeply in production around 1890 when mild steel largely replaced iron for structural applications.

When I found this logging spike, I could tell right away that it was an old piece of genuine wrought iron. It had such a strong grain running lengthwise that it looked almost like wood and back at the shop it was very stringy in a break test.

After forging the blade, the layers of slag and varying carbon content were still visible and flowed beautifully from the rough texture of the handle.

The lines, twist, and texture on this amazing piece of iron make it hard to put down and it would make an excellent desktop sculpture or conversation piece. A lower carbon blade, this knife will not hold a true edge and therefore one of the Serious Letter Opener series.

The blade and handle were hand forged from a reclaimed logging spike and finished mainly by hand using files. The blade is 3.5″ long and the overall length is about 8.5″.

Material: Reclaimed wrought iron

Available: This piece is in a private collection in Vancouver.