2 year's to finish my first takedown - what's the longest it took you to finsh one?

[Atlas Knife Company]

Finally nearing completion. . . This is the first blade that I ever forged, back at Ashokan 2010. Prior to Ashokan 2010, I had never seen or used a forge. I forged it after watching many people work steel, occasionally asking Kevin Cashen for advice on what I was doing. Sam Salvati gave me the piece of steel, which he believes to be 5160. The handle came from a block of Koa that a guy at Ashokan gave me for helping unlock his car after he locked the keys in it. Almost sole authorship, except Sam Salvati drew the tang out for me on the power hammer. I had originally threaded the tang, but the threads weren't good enough so I welded a 10-32 grade 8 bolt onto it.

Jim Polling, ABS JS, stated that he could see the temper line in it, before I could tell him that it was differentially hardened. The spine was coated with Satanite and I did the HT under the guidance of Dave Larsen almost 18 months ago. The clay was on the spine for a good 6 months. The filework is a simple alternating round file pattern. The only thing left to do is etch a logo on it.

5160 Forged Hunter w/ Filework
5½" cutting edge
10½" OAL
Titanium and brass guard
Titanium butt
CA Finished Koa

Unassembled!