Cherry Bowie

I finally got another knife out the door.  This one is a 7.5" bowie with a cherry handle I made for a friend from high school:

The blade is forged from 1/4" thick 1084 carbon steel.  It's a flat grind that I hand finished down to 400 grit.  It's also got some wire inlay done with NuGold wire (a.k.a. Jewelers Brass, Merlins Gold, and others).

My friend grew up in Durham, and so I used a chuck of cherry from a tree I felled on Maple Av (how ironic), probably half a mile from where he lived.  The handle is extra wide and long (6.25" x 1.25" at the guard) because he's got big hands and has trouble with standard knife handles.
I did most of the handle shaping with a fine saw, wood rasps, and files.  I sanded it with 400grit in the end to remove the micro facets that files leave when making curved surfaces.  Then it got 5 coats of Waterlox wiping varnish and a coat of Renaissance Wax.  The fittings were ground from brass barstock.

The sheath is made from 8-10oz top grade tooling leather, dyed, embossed, and stitched by hand.

I sharpened it down to 16k grit using a sharpening guide, and it's crazy sharp.  I often hold the angle by hand and you can get a very sharp knife that way.  But the guides hold the angle perfectly so when you go past 1k grit for sharpening you end up with an edge that you don't even feel cutting you until it's too late - ask me how I know :-\