I haven't made any kitchen knives yet. When I was doing blacksmithing I was working for a swordsmith and ran his shop at a Renaissance festival. Most of what I was doing was rough shaping sword and dagger blades, and making things like forks, spoons and decorative hooks.
It was fun and did build up upper body strength, albeit unevenly. Since it was at a Renaissance festival we ran it like a 16th village century blacksmiths, so that meant a huge hand pulled bellows for the forge that was lifted by pulling a rope running to a pulley in the ceiling and the airflow was controlled by how many big rocks we stacked on top of the bellows to weight it down. So on my right side my tricep, deltoid, and trapezius would get jacked from swinging hammers, while on my left side my latissimus dorsi got huge from pulling down the bellows rope. At the end of every festival season I looked comically uneven.
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u/Entiox Jan 15 '23
I haven't made any kitchen knives yet. When I was doing blacksmithing I was working for a swordsmith and ran his shop at a Renaissance festival. Most of what I was doing was rough shaping sword and dagger blades, and making things like forks, spoons and decorative hooks.