Gemini Twins

[JayFisher]

New Arrivals to the world!

The Gemini knives are a matching, yet unique pair of custom knives. The top knife is made of O-1 high carbon tungsten-vanadium alloy tool steel, mirror finished, hand-engraved, and hot blued for a jet black finish. The gemstone on the handle is hard, polished crazy lace agate, a beautiful gem with fascinating patterns, bands, crystal inclusions, and colors. The bottom knife is made of 440C high chromium stainless steel, mirror polished and hand-engraved, with 304 high nickel-chromium stainless steel bolsters, and a lapis lazulii (lazurite) gemstone handle that has a fantastic blue color interspersed with clouds of gray and bright golden points of pyrite. Both knives have matching, yet unique engravings, and the stars and patters are reminiscent of the constellations in the cosmos.

Below: The stand allows the knives to be displayed either in the open (photo above) or closed position, and each position displays a different side of the knife. The stand is artistically carved and hand-finished American black walnut hardwood, with paduk hardwood pins, finely sanded and oil-sealed.

Here's a close up of the fileworked and anodized Titanium liners:

Some close ups of the handle scales:

Now you know why I make more gemstone handled knives than anyone in the world!

 

[Dmitry.M]

That is simply perfect.

 

[JurT]

Beautiful!

 

[Dogpack]

you do some really nice lapidary work. what kind of equipement do you use for it

 

[JayFisher]

you do some really nice lapidary work. what kind of equipement do you use for it

Here's a 24" Rock saw, and I'm setting it up to block a big chunk of white dendritic agate. A very messy job!

Gemstone is the toughest, hardest, most frustrating material in the world to work with. To work with rock, you must have a complete lapidary shop. I've seen some beautiful stone ruined by guys that think they can work it on their belt grinder (the mainstay of the knifemaker's shop). Gem must be worked with under special oil or water, and never heated during cutting and grinding. It must be cut with diamond saws that run under a special pure mineral oil coolant, and the feed rate and cutting speed carefully controlled. I have eleven rock saws, from a 24" diameter to a 4" diameter. I also have dozens of small, hand-held diamond saws, cutters and grinders. To shape rock, it must be ground with either diamond or silicon carbide lapidary wheels under water or oil. I have six separate wet grinders for such a task. The finishing of stone is very tedious and sometimes tricky. You must wet-sand with specialized belts (either silicon carbide, aluminum oxide, or diamond abrasives) under water or special oil. To properly finish a rock, it must be ground through ten steps of grade of abrasives, and the polishing method for each stone is different. To polish, I use cerium oxide, tin oxide, aluminum oxide, numerous man made polish materials, on many different mandrels and tools, including impregnated phenolics, hardwoods, hard and soft felts, diamond impregnated bands, leather, muslin, cotton, and canvas.

Here's one of my wet lapidary grinders. Wet, cold, chattering, like using a rock to grind rock. Don't try this with a regular grinding wheel, it will explode!

You can see more details and over 230 pictures of gemstone handles I've made on my website, on my "Gemstone handles Page" here.

 

[Dogpack]

wow, im speechless. my wife has done a little lapidary work. we have one wet saw and a benchgrinder she used, so i know what you mean about the benchgrinder. i made a handle for a knife that we put some nice green marble on. she broke a couple before she got it right. i bookmarked your site to browse later. thanks for the info, we really love your work