First commissioned knives

[chopsuey9999]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to share some blades I've been working on (still am) for some friends as gifts, a cheese knife in denimite and a leaf bladed camp knife in natural micarta and vulcanized fiber liners ( I know I'm going to get heat for that from other makers, but what's done is done and I've done everything I could to make sure they were well glued). I'm also working on a pocket fixed blade (most recently ground knife) and a nessmuk from an old blank that I made 2 years ago, both in cocobolo. I forgot to take pictures of those ones in the process unfortunately. Sometimes it's easy to forget when you're wrapped up in sanding/ grinding/ gluing/ drilling. All knives are done in 1/8" O1 steel save for the nessmuk. This is less of a a WIP and more of an eclectic gallery my last knife making project when I did remember to take pictures. Let me know what you guys think - more pictures to come!

From top to bottom : cheese knife, nessmuk, pocket fixed blade, camp knife

Sorry about the image quality on these pictures - I'll be using my "real" camera as opposed to my phone when I take photos of the finished products.

 

[chopsuey9999]

Have been busy with work once again, so I wasn't able to work on the knives for about 2 weeks or so, but I've gotten around to making up two of the four knives I've been working on. The first one was the small pocket edc knife which I done up in cocobolo and took up to a 2500 grit sheen. It was surprisingly difficult to bring out the chatoyance in the wood, but I think I managed to pull it off, unfortunately it doesn't really show up in the photos. I decided to do a simple leather pancake style sheath finished with wax.

As a learning experience, it was quite eye opening how easily a leather sheath could get goofed up from not planning ahead with how much extra material should be left on for final shaping. Needless to say this was the second sheath for this knife, but it gave me great insight for the second one which went along much more smoothly!

The second knife I finished was the cheese knife. This knife was a little experimental on two fronts. The denimite handle material, which was somewhat like a rag micarta but with a different resin, and in my opinion was a fair bit easier to shape than micarta. With respect to finishing however I felt it needed a fair amount of work to bring the figure in the material to something desirable, since it would normally look fairly dull at lower grits. For the sheath, I decided to draw from the saya designs for Japanese chef's knives, but wanted to use leather as the primary material to minimize bulk. The stop pin is made from cocobolo that I turned and polished on my old drill press, and I attached it using some braided red cotton skein. I thought that it turned out fairly well, since the pin does give quite a bit of extra security to keep the knife from falling out, and gives it a unique look, so I might be trying this style again on future projects!