Horsewright
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 13,310
Many if not most of my customers are working cowboys, ranchers etc. These are folks that will use their knives hard. Recently I had two interesting cases back for repair, both belong to ranchers.
Tale One:
I made this Gordo, handled in mammoth tooth many years ago. It belongs to a rancher in Wyoming. He called and told me that he'd broken the handle and wanted me to fix it up, it was his favorite knife. We didn't talk about details, I just said send er in and we'll see what we can do. When I got it and realized the handle was mammoth tooth we had us a difficulty. Here's what it looked like:
The problem is that California had passed some recent legislation that prevents me from working with mammoth ivory or mammoth tooth. Well that's not totally correct. It prevents me from buying or selling these two materials. So I can't call a supplier and order up a set of tooth or ivory. However, if you live outside of the state of California you can send me your tooth and or ivory and I can still work with it. This can be complicated and the rest of this handle was still in great shape, it would be tough duplicating such a great set of scales. Instead of chiseling off the handle and having him order a new set of scales and then having him ship me the new set of scales to put on his knife, here's what I came up:
I took some old scrap of tooth that I had and crushed it up with a hammer on the anvil. I mixed the pieces in with some epoxy and added some black dye to the epoxy. Here are all three of our components before mixing:
I then made a dam out of some blue painters tape and poured in our gunk:
Gave it a couple of days and roughly ground it down:
I then put it in with the batch of knives that I was working on at the time. When we got to the finish handle grinding and polishing stages this is what we came up with. I knocked a little rust off the blade and sharpened the knife too:
Back in its sheath and ready for more work:
Total cost to the customer: $0.00. See I can neither sell nor buy mammoth ivory or tooth and did not.
Tale Two:
At about the same time another rancher called me and said he'd lost his knife. It was somewhere in the corrals. It been MIA for a couple of months when his daughter found a "stick" sticking up out of some manure. Wonder if that's dad's knife and it was. Dad was gonna do the girls chores for a couple of weeks for finding his knife. He wanted to know what could be done to fix er up and I said send er in and lets see. This is what I got:
Its one of my California Coyotes and it looked like to me with a walnut handle.
I was kind of pleased with how well the handle had stayed on considering it had been buried in manure for a couple of months, a pretty acidic habitat.
So I sawed off the handle and found out it was ironwood not walnut:
Did a little cleanup grinding and re etched it:
Cut some new ironwood scales:
Then just finished er off:
Ready to ship back home. I had to tighten up the old sheath as the new handle was slightly slimmer:
This one I did charge like $30 to cover the new handle material.
I was really pleased with how these two projects came out and so were the customers. Whadya think? Hope ya enjoyed our little adventure. Questions and comments always welcome.
Tale One:
I made this Gordo, handled in mammoth tooth many years ago. It belongs to a rancher in Wyoming. He called and told me that he'd broken the handle and wanted me to fix it up, it was his favorite knife. We didn't talk about details, I just said send er in and we'll see what we can do. When I got it and realized the handle was mammoth tooth we had us a difficulty. Here's what it looked like:
The problem is that California had passed some recent legislation that prevents me from working with mammoth ivory or mammoth tooth. Well that's not totally correct. It prevents me from buying or selling these two materials. So I can't call a supplier and order up a set of tooth or ivory. However, if you live outside of the state of California you can send me your tooth and or ivory and I can still work with it. This can be complicated and the rest of this handle was still in great shape, it would be tough duplicating such a great set of scales. Instead of chiseling off the handle and having him order a new set of scales and then having him ship me the new set of scales to put on his knife, here's what I came up:
I took some old scrap of tooth that I had and crushed it up with a hammer on the anvil. I mixed the pieces in with some epoxy and added some black dye to the epoxy. Here are all three of our components before mixing:
I then made a dam out of some blue painters tape and poured in our gunk:
Gave it a couple of days and roughly ground it down:
I then put it in with the batch of knives that I was working on at the time. When we got to the finish handle grinding and polishing stages this is what we came up with. I knocked a little rust off the blade and sharpened the knife too:
Back in its sheath and ready for more work:
Total cost to the customer: $0.00. See I can neither sell nor buy mammoth ivory or tooth and did not.
Tale Two:
At about the same time another rancher called me and said he'd lost his knife. It was somewhere in the corrals. It been MIA for a couple of months when his daughter found a "stick" sticking up out of some manure. Wonder if that's dad's knife and it was. Dad was gonna do the girls chores for a couple of weeks for finding his knife. He wanted to know what could be done to fix er up and I said send er in and lets see. This is what I got:
Its one of my California Coyotes and it looked like to me with a walnut handle.
I was kind of pleased with how well the handle had stayed on considering it had been buried in manure for a couple of months, a pretty acidic habitat.
So I sawed off the handle and found out it was ironwood not walnut:
Did a little cleanup grinding and re etched it:
Cut some new ironwood scales:
Then just finished er off:
Ready to ship back home. I had to tighten up the old sheath as the new handle was slightly slimmer:
This one I did charge like $30 to cover the new handle material.
I was really pleased with how these two projects came out and so were the customers. Whadya think? Hope ya enjoyed our little adventure. Questions and comments always welcome.
my dad always told me if you trust the salesman/craftsman buy his product/service. Still holds true today.
