Transitional Dagger

I started making knives back in the late 80's and early 90's.  Back then there was no internet, just Jim Hrisoulas's book The Complete Bladesmith.  It was also hard to get materials, so I made do.  One of the last blades I made before Michelle was born and all my spare time disappeared was the blade for this dagger.

It was big old file, so it's probably W1, but who knows.  When Michelle got her drivers license I started making knives again and learned more about heat treating at NESM.  So I took this blade and redid the heat treat to something quite a bit better.  The blade is 13" long.  The fittings are mild steel, and the handle is  carved cherry, stabilized but not baked.

 And yes, that heart on the second side does say "Mom" on it in Elder Futhark runes.

Another Celtic-ish Knife

This knife I made about a year ago.

The blade is a little over 9" long, made from 1/4" thick 1075.  Originally it was a straight blade, but I didn't like the way the heat-treating came out the first time, so I did it again.  When I did the tip dropped a full half inch.  I quench in oil (McMaster-Carr FastQuench), and I know that with japanese swords (which start out straight) they curve upwards if quenched in water and downward if quenched in oil.  But this was not done japanese style with clay, so you got me.

This is the first blade I carved the braidwork pattern on, and the first one I carved the handle on.

Originally there was supposed to be a face on the end, but as I started bringing the braids onto the end it quickly became apparent that they were way to bog for the face design, and they swallowed it - as you can see here.  Those are wormholes in the wood.  One of the things I was experimenting with was making a knife look not new.  The aesthetic of having everything perfectly polished and flat is somewhat interesting, but I get bored with it pretty fast.  It's also very impractical, as anyone who has every bought a dark colored new car will tell you.  That super-shiny looks only last about 2 days.

Pseudo-Viking knife

I just finished this knife this week.  It's one of those knives that started out not knowing what it was going to be.  The original intent was to see if I could forge & heat-treat a long knife out of 1/8" steel and keep it straight.  I managed to do that.  The blade is 9" of perfectly straight 1084.

But then I wasn't sure what to do with it.  I had at least two very different designs for the handle before the carving bug bit me again and I carved a handle inspired by some viking art out of cherry.  As you can probably tell from the way the light reflects off the handle in the second picture the handle is finished with a blade - not sanding.  I really prefer the dappled surface produced by a sharp carving tool as opposed to sanding.

3 Simpler Knives

Not all the knives I make are carved in some way.  These are 3 knives I forged during last years Durham Fair while being a demonstrator in the farm building.

All of these are forged from 1/8" thick 1084 bars.  The blade lengths are 6", 5 1/2", and 4".   I started forging the 1/8 bars because they are really thin and it forces be to be very precise in my hammering.  The top knife still has 3 hammer blows visible near the top of the blade where I hit too hard and couldn't grind deep enough to get rid of them with making the blade too thin.
The handles are all maple from my brother's firewood pile.  The top two are a grain pattern called Tiger Stripe, and the bottom knife is burl.

Damascus

Brian asked me to post this now so I will.  It's not a knife yet - it needs a handle & sharpening - but this is my first damascus steel blade.  I made it at the New England School of Metalwork.

 This damascus steel is more accurately called pattern-welded steel.  It's made my forge-welding together alternating layer of two different types of steel.  After lots of folding & manipulation (think croissant dough) you shape it into a blade and then etch it to bring out the differences between the two different steel.

It's not really any better than 'regular' steel, but it's very pretty and big fun to make.

Birds

This is a utility knife I made a couple months ago.  The blade is 1084 and it's my first attempt to use Japanese style heat treating.  The Japanese put a coating of clay on the back of the blade so that the steel on the back remains soft while the edge hardens.  The transition between the two kinds of steel is visible on the blade and is called a hamon.  You can barely make it out in the picture - it's nothing noteworthy on this blade.

 The handle is tiger stripe maple and the guard is brass.  What did come out nicely on this knife is the filework pattern on the spine of the blade.  The pattern came to me after looking at some Escher prints.  The picture also shows some of the workmanship flaws I'm going to have to correct before I submit my knives to the American Bladesmith Society for the journeyman test. If you look at the corner where the wood, the blade, and the guard meet you'll see that the wood doesn't go completely into the corner.  The gap has epoxy in it.  That gap is a no-no.
What came out very well is the way the brass guard meets the blade.  There is zero gap.  That is what I need to have on all my seams/junctions before I test.

Inception

Well, I was going to build my own website, but the easy website creators were frustrating and i managed to break them, and the pro tools were too much like work.  I code enough during the day that it's the last thing I want to do when I get home.  So this is the compromise.

The whole purpose of this blog is to let other people see my work.  I'm not actively selling stuff right now, but if something really catches your eye email me and we can talk about it.  By the way, "stuff" = knives, bows, furniture, sculpture, tools, and anything else I feel like building.  So let's start with a bang - my addled interpretation of a viking war knife:

The blade is 16" long with an over length of 25".  Yes, there is a lively debate whether it's a short sword or a
really big knife.  The blade is made from 1075 carbon steel, with a bit of differential hardening done by eye.  The result is what looks like smoke clouds in the blade.  I find it interesting.

 The handle is heat-darkened cherry carved in a Celtic knot pattern.  It's been stabilized with Min-wax wood hardener and finished with Waterlox. Fittings are brass that I shaped myself from bar stock.

The back of the blade has a braid carved into it for about 3/4 of the blade length.  To answer the question everyone asks, it was done with files, chisels, and gravers.
And to answer the second question everyone asks, it took me approximately 72 hours total to make the knife & sheath.