Fossil Coral Kopa

tonydahose

tonydahose

Joined
Oct 28, 2005
Messages
742
OK guys, this was the hardest one to make. a member on the spyderco forum asked me to do a few kopa conversions back in april IIRC. the materials were blue mammoth tooth and coral. the coral turned out to be to difficult to work with. it would just fall apart when i sanded it and if it didnt there would a ton of voids in the material, it was like pumice. Anyways i contacted him and we agreed on using redwood burl as an alternate material. Well this has been thorn in my side since then and i am very stubborn. i think i figured out how to make it work, it took about 4 times the amount of labor to do it but i am pretty happy with the results. again, not the best pics but my lightbox still hasn't arrived. i offered the kinife to him or to pay what he did for the coral. if he doesnt bite, this one is definitely staying in my collection.

BRAIN CORAL KOPA
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tonydahose said:
thanks and all is well, i just took the summer off to spend more time with the kids.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear all is well. Question on the coral you used, was it the one in the images above or the standard red coral? I remember when Iw as in my late teens and early 20s, I dabbled in silversmithing. I made pendants, rings, watch bands out of silver and used turquoise and red coral. I would get batches of turquoise & coral that weren't stabilized properly from time to time and it was impossible to work with. It would literally fall apart on the buffing wheel.
 
i believe the coral came from fineturnage.com the outer layer was stabilized but it didn't go very deep so i would sand a lil, then epoxy...repeat alot.;)
 
Wow. That is a damn nice look. Totally impressed. Gorgeous effect.
Is it delicate? Do you have to really kid glove the knife? A knife to keep under glass now?
Or could this still be a user to any reasonable extent?
 
i dont think it will be too delicate with all the epoxy on it. as far as grip this thing is pretty smooth now. i went up to 600 grit wet sanding it before i polished it on the buffer. i have over 20 custom kopas now, they stay in the drawer for the most part and i take different ones out when a dressier knife is needed. i think i have 2 or 3 more to do before i am done with all the extras that i have, then i will have to move on to a different model.
 
Excellent. I was kind of wondering just how much epoxy/resin this material could take.
Very sweet. My stainless steel Polliwog is the closest thing I have to a gentleman carry.
I'm going to have to change that soon. I'm getting too old to be scaring people and I'm naked without a knife. Something along the lines of a Kopa as you've shown might be what I need to start thinking about for those occasions where I'm having to rub elbows with those NON-knife people.
Again, very nice work.
 
Beautiful and excellently executed!

Being a diver I've seen a lot of brain coral and I have never thought to see it on a knife!
 
OK, since the last and my first coral kopa got picked up by the original owner i needed to make some for myself. here is the first one. i left the clip off for the pics because i think that side looks better IMO, that always seems to be the case. you can see a small fisure on the non-clip side in certain angles, that is the way it came. the material it is fossilized dyed coral, hope you like it.

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here is one more fossilized corral. i need to work on the lighting because the color in the pictures isn't as vibrant compared to looking at it in person.

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EDIT: group pic
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