- Joined
- Oct 30, 2002
- Messages
- 3,974
In February, I had a young man contact me asking me to be a mentor for his senior project here in town. All of the graduates from this high school have to do a senior project of some sort, be it making something, learning a skill, community service project, etc. Luke wanted to make a knife and found me through my website on a google search.
Over the last several months, Luke has been coming to the shop and making his knife. He has done all the work on the knife himself with me guiding and offering advice along the way. I told him from the very start that I wanted him to end up it something he would be proud of; handmade doesn't have to LOOK handmade, if you know what I mean. He surpassed my expectations and turned out a very nicely finished first knife.
Here he is starting the bevels with a 45 degree approach:
Shaping the handle:
This is his knife which he designed and made himself adapted from the classic Nessmuk design. It is stock removal CPM 154 tested at 59 Rockwell. It has a full flat grind with a working 400 grit hand-sanded finish as it will see use in the field. The handle is tan canvas micarta with black G10 spacers screwed and glued with corby bolts and acraglas. It was ground to a very thin edge (~.010") and sharpened with stones on a Sharpmaker. It turned out very very sharp and has great cutting geometry. I forgot to grab pictures before it got out of the shop, but Luke sent me a few he took.
I'm proud for him. He showed great work ethic and attention to detail without much prompting on my part. He did a top notch job for a first knife, and I wanted to show his work here. I'll forward him the link to this post. Let him know what you think.
--nathan
Over the last several months, Luke has been coming to the shop and making his knife. He has done all the work on the knife himself with me guiding and offering advice along the way. I told him from the very start that I wanted him to end up it something he would be proud of; handmade doesn't have to LOOK handmade, if you know what I mean. He surpassed my expectations and turned out a very nicely finished first knife.
Here he is starting the bevels with a 45 degree approach:
Shaping the handle:
This is his knife which he designed and made himself adapted from the classic Nessmuk design. It is stock removal CPM 154 tested at 59 Rockwell. It has a full flat grind with a working 400 grit hand-sanded finish as it will see use in the field. The handle is tan canvas micarta with black G10 spacers screwed and glued with corby bolts and acraglas. It was ground to a very thin edge (~.010") and sharpened with stones on a Sharpmaker. It turned out very very sharp and has great cutting geometry. I forgot to grab pictures before it got out of the shop, but Luke sent me a few he took.
I'm proud for him. He showed great work ethic and attention to detail without much prompting on my part. He did a top notch job for a first knife, and I wanted to show his work here. I'll forward him the link to this post. Let him know what you think.
--nathan
