While looking for things to do in Hanoi, Dom discovered a super cool activity: Knife Making! (Incase you didn't know - Dom LOVES knives 😂)
This was a 3 hour workshop where you get to design and make your own knife with the help of a Vietnamese blacksmith.
The steps (as we understood them) were as follows:
- Roughly carve the handle
- Cut the blade to a rough shape/size
- Strengthen the blade by heating and hammering
- Bash the blade with the bashing machine
- Straighten the blade
- Shape the blade with the grinder
- Temper the blade
- To make sure the blade keeps its edge, the blacksmith put salt on the blade, heated it up, and then she dipped it in oil and sand.
- Sharpen the blade using 3 different grinding wheels and manual honing
- Put the handle on and sand it
We didn't get to do all the steps solo (since some steps require proper training and can be quite dangerous if you don't know what your are doing!), but we were impressed at how many of the actual knife-making steps we got to participate in. We had so much fun!!
