- Joined
- Jul 8, 2001
- Messages
- 849
CactusRose Buffalo Hunter Set
Style of Knives Frontier Buffalo Hunter Set - two knives: Sticker & Skinner
Blade: 5" - Handforged Frontier Shear Steel - rustic/aged finish with file work on spine.
Grips: Sticker: Deer bone with a buffalo (American Bison) rawhide wrap, brass tacks beaded fringe. Skinner: Mule deer antler with pewter bolster and butt cap and brass tack decoration
Fittings: Buffalo (American Bison) rawhide & cast pewter
Sheath: Metis style - double sheath
Liner & Cover: Buffalo rawhide and smoketan buckskin collar
Decoration: Glass, brass, & copper beads. Brass tacks. Tin cone tinklers with horse hair hair tufts.
Bladesmith: Cactus Forge, Gilbert "Gib" Guignard, PO Box 3413, Quartzite, Arizona 85359 1-928-927-4831 gib01@direcway.com
Knifemaker & Sheathmaker: Wild Rose Trading Company, Chuck & Linda Burrows, PO Box 5174, Durango, CO 81303, 970-259-8396 chuck @wrtcleather.com
Warranty: This knife and sheath are warrantied for everything but abuse and/or using them for purposes outside the range of their design for the life of the original owner
SOLD PENDING FUNDS
Price: $1,500.00 plus $30.00 S/H (2nd Day AIr UPS) CONUS, International Sales USPS actual cost
Terrms: Upon receipt of this set the purchaser will have a 5 day inspection period. If not satisfied the purchaser must return the set via the same method as shipped at their cost.
Paymen Methodt: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Money Order, PayPal, Western Union
CACTUSROSE - FRONTIER SHEAR STEEL
"A blacksmith named Newton, at LaPointe Wisconsin in 1836 complained that it was impossible to warrant the half axes and tomahawks because of the blister steel being so bad."
The above quote set my mind to thinking.....Hmmmm....Here is a frontier smith, a thousand miles or more from his nearest supplier, who gets a load of lousy blister steel. What to do? It would take months to get a new load and in the meantime....Now he knows that blister steel was made into shear steel, a more refined/amalgamated product, by hammering and folding and hammering and folding some more. Of course the commercial shear steel product was made using massive tilt hammers and all the frontier smith had was his right arm and a 10 pound sledge (well maybe a helper too). Soooo.....
Original blister steel was made by "cooking" wrought iron rods in a sealed bath of charcoal. The iron rods absorbed carbon from the charcoal and blister steel was created. The problem with the blister steel process was quality of the end product - the rods - depending on where they lay in the stack, etc. didn't absorb carbon equally so when finished the rods varied in quantity and quality of carbon.
My original train of thought was what "modern" product would come closest to imitating original blister steel, since currently real blister steel is a rare commodity. According to various researchers of 18th/19th Century steels, the modern 10xx series of plain carbon steels most closely matches the 18th and 19th century product and since it comes in varying carbon contents from .05 to .95 the old wheels started spinning faster.
Hmmmm what if.....?
So I got on the phone with my collaborator Gib Guignard of CactusForge. He had some 1084 and 1095 on hand, so we gave it a shot. These two blades ( a third, much larger one, is in the wings waiting for a handle and sheath) are our first blades based on my idea and Gib's skill wielding a hand held hammer. Other than the fact he used a propane forge, he made theses blades just like a frontier smith would have, with the hand tools he had available - thus our name for this simple, pattern welded steel made ala a smith of the frontier- is Frontier Shear Steel.
Since we are already making frontier style knives and hawks our idea is to produce a shear type steel comparable to that of what a frontier smith could have made using the limited resources at his disposal: only hand tools, time would also have been a factor - he wouldn't have had the luxury to experiment a great deal, and he therefore would most likely have kept his layer count fairly low - these blades are 32 layers - in the future we plan to increase that to perhaps 48 or 64 layers).
Our Frontier Shear Steel is still in the early stages of development. Other options for our Frontier Shear Steel version is to use a higher layer count to start with, these blades started out as 4 layers - 2 of 1084 and 2 of 1095, and also to vary the steel/carbon content to more closely imitate the varied carbon content of the original blister steel by throwing some 1040/1050 and 1065/1070 or whatever into the mix.
On the other hand our next step, is a step backwards - with the help of fellow collaborator and bladesmith Mark Williams, our plan is to make our own blister steel, and then use that to make our Frontier Shear Steel.
The name Frontier Shear Steel is to differentiate our shear steel from the 18th/19th century commercially made shear steel, which as stated above was produced with the aid of water powered tilt hammers and had somewhat higher than a frontier smith would most likely have gone to. It also differentiates our steel from the Frontier Damascus made by other blademakers who use various scraps to form that particular product - Frontier Shear Steel will be made only from full sized skelps as would have been available to a frontier smith and only from either 10xx series "modern steel" or from our own soon to be produced blister steel.
Chuck Burrows, Wild Rose Trading Company
Style of Knives Frontier Buffalo Hunter Set - two knives: Sticker & Skinner
Blade: 5" - Handforged Frontier Shear Steel - rustic/aged finish with file work on spine.
Grips: Sticker: Deer bone with a buffalo (American Bison) rawhide wrap, brass tacks beaded fringe. Skinner: Mule deer antler with pewter bolster and butt cap and brass tack decoration
Fittings: Buffalo (American Bison) rawhide & cast pewter
Sheath: Metis style - double sheath
Liner & Cover: Buffalo rawhide and smoketan buckskin collar
Decoration: Glass, brass, & copper beads. Brass tacks. Tin cone tinklers with horse hair hair tufts.
Bladesmith: Cactus Forge, Gilbert "Gib" Guignard, PO Box 3413, Quartzite, Arizona 85359 1-928-927-4831 gib01@direcway.com
Knifemaker & Sheathmaker: Wild Rose Trading Company, Chuck & Linda Burrows, PO Box 5174, Durango, CO 81303, 970-259-8396 chuck @wrtcleather.com
Warranty: This knife and sheath are warrantied for everything but abuse and/or using them for purposes outside the range of their design for the life of the original owner
SOLD PENDING FUNDS
Price: $1,500.00 plus $30.00 S/H (2nd Day AIr UPS) CONUS, International Sales USPS actual cost
Terrms: Upon receipt of this set the purchaser will have a 5 day inspection period. If not satisfied the purchaser must return the set via the same method as shipped at their cost.
Paymen Methodt: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Money Order, PayPal, Western Union
CACTUSROSE - FRONTIER SHEAR STEEL
"A blacksmith named Newton, at LaPointe Wisconsin in 1836 complained that it was impossible to warrant the half axes and tomahawks because of the blister steel being so bad."
The above quote set my mind to thinking.....Hmmmm....Here is a frontier smith, a thousand miles or more from his nearest supplier, who gets a load of lousy blister steel. What to do? It would take months to get a new load and in the meantime....Now he knows that blister steel was made into shear steel, a more refined/amalgamated product, by hammering and folding and hammering and folding some more. Of course the commercial shear steel product was made using massive tilt hammers and all the frontier smith had was his right arm and a 10 pound sledge (well maybe a helper too). Soooo.....
Original blister steel was made by "cooking" wrought iron rods in a sealed bath of charcoal. The iron rods absorbed carbon from the charcoal and blister steel was created. The problem with the blister steel process was quality of the end product - the rods - depending on where they lay in the stack, etc. didn't absorb carbon equally so when finished the rods varied in quantity and quality of carbon.
My original train of thought was what "modern" product would come closest to imitating original blister steel, since currently real blister steel is a rare commodity. According to various researchers of 18th/19th Century steels, the modern 10xx series of plain carbon steels most closely matches the 18th and 19th century product and since it comes in varying carbon contents from .05 to .95 the old wheels started spinning faster.
Hmmmm what if.....?
So I got on the phone with my collaborator Gib Guignard of CactusForge. He had some 1084 and 1095 on hand, so we gave it a shot. These two blades ( a third, much larger one, is in the wings waiting for a handle and sheath) are our first blades based on my idea and Gib's skill wielding a hand held hammer. Other than the fact he used a propane forge, he made theses blades just like a frontier smith would have, with the hand tools he had available - thus our name for this simple, pattern welded steel made ala a smith of the frontier- is Frontier Shear Steel.
Since we are already making frontier style knives and hawks our idea is to produce a shear type steel comparable to that of what a frontier smith could have made using the limited resources at his disposal: only hand tools, time would also have been a factor - he wouldn't have had the luxury to experiment a great deal, and he therefore would most likely have kept his layer count fairly low - these blades are 32 layers - in the future we plan to increase that to perhaps 48 or 64 layers).
Our Frontier Shear Steel is still in the early stages of development. Other options for our Frontier Shear Steel version is to use a higher layer count to start with, these blades started out as 4 layers - 2 of 1084 and 2 of 1095, and also to vary the steel/carbon content to more closely imitate the varied carbon content of the original blister steel by throwing some 1040/1050 and 1065/1070 or whatever into the mix.
On the other hand our next step, is a step backwards - with the help of fellow collaborator and bladesmith Mark Williams, our plan is to make our own blister steel, and then use that to make our Frontier Shear Steel.
The name Frontier Shear Steel is to differentiate our shear steel from the 18th/19th century commercially made shear steel, which as stated above was produced with the aid of water powered tilt hammers and had somewhat higher than a frontier smith would most likely have gone to. It also differentiates our steel from the Frontier Damascus made by other blademakers who use various scraps to form that particular product - Frontier Shear Steel will be made only from full sized skelps as would have been available to a frontier smith and only from either 10xx series "modern steel" or from our own soon to be produced blister steel.
Chuck Burrows, Wild Rose Trading Company
