Busy,busy, busy

Too damn busy to even post until now.
I went to a gem setting class in August at Peters Valley.  These pictures are pretty crappy, but you get the idea.  Modern jewelry with faceted stones in a variety of settings.

Yes, you will start seeing gems in knives and jewelry now.

The second thing that kept me busy was putting up a timber frame I made for my brothers shed:

I felled the trees and cut the raw beams probably 4 or 5 years back, then I did the cutting to size and the joinery a couple winters ago.  Because of various reasons we didn't get around to assembling it until this August

It's real post & beam joinery with  giant mortises and tenons, and the corners are the classic english tying joint

The third thing that kept me busy was secretly making a bowie knife for my brother's 50th birthday in September:

 The blade is about 8" long, made from 1095 and 15N20.  This is one of the first billets of damascus I ever made.

 The fitting are made from old wrought iron we dug up at our mom's house (she lives in a 1815 farm house).  I etched them in ferric chloride and t hem hit them with a wire wheel, and now they look as much like wood as they do like steel.

 The handle is spalted Japanese red maple that I stabilized.  It came from a dying maple in my mom's yard we used to play in when we were kids.

I ran some vine pattern file work down the length of the spine.

And just to keep things interesting, I also made 3 custom rune rings, two of which were wedding bands.

I think it's time for a nap.