The Art of Material Making

While sitting in my forging and forming class today, we had a guest speaker come in to show and discuss how to make knives. He is a "semi-professional" blade smith and is also a student in the class. I found the class very interesting and learned quite a bit on the process of making a knife and how standards are assessed for knife makers to be considered a "Master Blade Smith"

For the communicating science class I am in we are talking about relating to other blogs similar to ours and I have come across a great blog post on Movies Blog which is a blog I follow that ties these concepts in.

For a start, the art of making a knife takes hours and tons of dedication to produce a good product. As we learned in class the student just sold a knife for $1500 and said it took around 80 Hours to build. This is partially due to his material which is Damascus Steel which is used in many types of knives and swords around the world for its durability and for the intricate designs that can be made into it.

Now for Hollywood. Many of us have seen the X-Men movies and most everyone also knows who wolverine is.(if not good idea to check it out) he is said to have adamantium skeleton that is stronger than any material known to man at that time. He is outfitted with blades (knives) that come out from his hands and are pretty remarkable. To actually make these in the movie the portray him as being down for days, almost dying, and losing his memory to coat him in these blades.  Using the above knowledge of knife making, this would takes probably hundreds of hours to achieve however, Hollywood can make these "Blades" for less than $30.

Due to some technical difficulties I cant link the video but here is the link to making Wolverine Claws in Hollywood.