What a hoot. You can't argue with the results.

Apparently, this video is from Indonesia. They refer to it as a machete but to me, it's a bit more than that. I'd love to have one of these.

That is a gorgeous blade. He made it look so easy! I can’t believe he got the fuller that even. By hand. With an angle grinder.

Wow.

I'd call it a cutlass. There's a lot of really cool videos on Youtube of guys turning leaf springs into all manner of swords. It's about the perfect backyard blacksmith raw material.

A friend of mine did the rear end on his truck years ago and gave me a set of leaf springs to cut up and make stuff like this with. Never got to doing it, and gave all my scraps including those to a friend who has a forge just before I moved.

Kinda wish I'd just thrown it in the back of the truck and kept it.

Yeah I've never seen an angle grinder used to make a blade, and I wouldn't have imagined the extent to which it might be used. He went to town with it. I figured, oh, he's just going to refine the shape with it, but if you took that tool away from him, he'd be out of business.

A lot of the shadetree blacksmithing videos I've seen make similarly extensive use of an angle grinder. Anything bigger than a kitchen knife, if you're "whitesmithing" (not forging to shape, but removing material to shape), it seems to be the tool to use. It seems pretty janky at first, but after trying it myself... I have a lot of respect for guys that can go to town with one and turn out a refined product. I evidently don't have a lot of aptitude for free-handing like that at high RPM. Or maybe I just need to turn several hundred pounds of scrap into dust before I can, I don't know.

What he did with shaping the flats into a high grind like that, a lot of guys use fancy belt sanders and jigs to do.

That's excellent. Reminds me of the sword in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, though this one is clearly shorter. The movie prop I found online was also referred to as a machete interestingly.

Amazing skills with the grinder. Loved the tree stump for hardening and the baggie method for mixing epoxy.

That was not his 1st blade that he made...and doing all of that grinding and working with hot metal while wearing flip-flops. ..drill sgt.

But will it keel?

Wow, that is an a amazing example of “ use what ya got and send it” Love this!!!!!

I’m game for a project! LoL
I have some steel & a few leaf springs awaiting use.
I bought a couple bowies at Subic Bay, Philippines made from leaf springs.
This is one.

That was awesome. It looks like a cutlass / short sword.

The late Jimmy Fikes was a pioneer in the modern forging of steel into blades. Jimmy loved leaf springs, he would tell me he had to run to the junkyard for a spring to make me a knife. He preferred old springs from trucks.

Jimmy Fikes's Jungle Honey:

Interesting that he unbent the eye of the leaf spring. Waste not, want not.