Home on the Range #051: Railroad Spike Knife Forging at Northstar Forge
Adam Scepaniak 09.08.23
When it comes to being self-reliant and not tethered to society it is good to be handy. Better yet, it is good to be good with your hands. This can come in the form of fixing your own vehicle, tying a flyfishing fly, having a gentle touch to handle honeybees, or the dexterity to form, manipulate, and mold materials. While it is convenient to buy many material possessions for our everyday lives, it is valuable and resourceful to craft our own items. Whether it is a potter on their wheel making a clay coffee mug, the carpenter cutting wood to form a chair, the knitter fashioning wool into clothing, or the blacksmith forging a knife. With the abundance of natural sustenance we discuss harvesting on AllOutdoor from venison to fish to upland birds, we are constantly deploying knives to process game animals. So, why not make our own?… My wife and I decided to try just that when we signed up for a Railroad Spike Knife Forging Class with Northstar Forge in Minnesota. Let’s dive into our experience forging a knife at a professional forge with ABS (American Bladesmith Society) Journeyman, Jason Kraus, who has the pedigree of having competed on the HISTORY channel’s “Forged in Fire” show!
“Home on the Range” Series Coverage on AllOutdoor
- Home on the Range #050: Honey, Bees & Beekeeping – How Sweet It Is!
- Home on the Range #049: Still Hunting – Ground Hunting Deer w/o a Blind
- Home on the Range #048 – Competition Shooting to Improve your Hunting
- Home on the Range #047: Ground Hunting Blinds – Hunt Deer at Eye Level
- Home on the Range #046: Creating a Deer Management Plan
Welcome to our reoccurring series of “Home on the Range.” Here, we would like to share all of our experiences for those who may be homesteading, living off the land, hunting, farming, ranching, and truly investing in nature and the great outdoors. The ability to provide for yourself and your family can be tremendously rewarding and simultaneously difficult at times. So, in “Home on the Range” we want to share our different exploits so you can learn and hopefully we can receive your feedback along the way as well.
Northstar Forge – It’s Beginning and Where It Is Today
Northstar Forge is a blacksmithing shop and forge based out of Carver, MN (southwest of the Twin Cities) that has been manipulating metal since early 2011. Leaving his prior trade of being a painter, Jason Kraus found his calling in leaving the toil of the daily grind in favor of sculpting metal into magnificent objects like knives, jewelry, and even swords.
“Founded by ABS Journeyman Smith Jason Kraus, Northstar Forge offers custom-made knives, swords, metal jewelry, knife accessories and more. Classes for knife-making and introductory blacksmithing are also available, where students gain hands-on skills in forging and metal manipulation.”
With over a decade of experience in blacksmithing and forging under his belt, Jason has sold blades and taught classes to people all across the United States. Jason even threw himself into the fire by competing in the HISTORY channel’s TV show “Forged in Fire” (Season 3, Episode 15) in January of 2017 to test his mettle while under fire (all fire puns intended). Competing against other accomplished bladesmiths and being pushed to his limits left him motivated, wiser, and hungrier for knowledge that can only be learned under pressure. He was soon invited to compete again, but this time on the Discovery channel’s Season 1 Season Finale of “Master of Arms” (December 2018).
What Brought Us to Northstar Forge
I not only write about living a self-reliant life of hunting, trapping, learning primitive skills, and being self-sufficient, but my wife and I look to actively live out that lifestyle. So, while adventuring up on the Gun Flint Trail of northern Minnesota we came across a folk school. Rather rare nowadays, but extremely impressive to see that places still exist that teach homesteading, crafting, and a lot of what I would deem “lost arts.” We noticed blacksmithing/forging was a skill they taught at this given school which really excited us!
I did like any middle-aged millennial would do and I fired up the ol’ Google searching for somewhere to make a knife, axe, or something to dabble in forging. If you live in the Midwest or Minnesota, the interwebs will point you to one place – Northstar Forge. Impeccable Google reviews… an authentically welcoming man in Jason Kraus… his wonderful wife, Kristen, works behind the scenes documenting forging through photography, managing their website, and keeping the business humming along at its now fast-paced velocity… and Jason’s body of work and experience speaks for itself.
Forging Railroad Spike Knives
When it comes to forging railroad spike knives it is exactly as badass, cool, and fun as it sounds. You take an actual railroad spike – crude, dirty, and tossed aside through time – then smash, heat, twist, contort, pound, and bend it to your will to hone it into something entirely different and useful again. For us, camp-style knives that could be used to process tinder or kindling for a campfire or numerous other outdoor tasks.
The process of creating our railroad spike knives far exceeds the brevity of one article. So, we will more thoroughly outline the entire process of Andrea and I making our railroad spike knives at Northstar Forge with Jason and Kristen in future articles of “Home on the Range.”
While Jason was on the TV show “Forged in Fire” and was long on his way to becoming a Master bladesmith before forging was popularized on social media in the last 20 years, I became excited about forging because of the show I saw on TV many years ago. Have you ever forged anything before? Taken a class? As always, let us know all of your thoughts in the Comments below! We always appreciate your feedback.
