Human implant titanium project

[Mecha]

Recently someone made a special project request: make menuki -handle ornaments- for his Super Assassin, made by Dan Keffeler. The task was to make them out of the titanium from a large implant that was removed from his busted femur after the bone had fully healed. Since he was a cool fellow (and because they would be on a Super Assassin, let's be real here), the task was accepted. The ornaments would be a pair of human femur bones, naturally.

After a week or so, the implant arrived in the mail from the other side of the world. The alloy is most certainly 6al4v ELI, a very pure and fine iteration of the common grade 5.

For some reason I expected the shank to be solid alloy, but it was in tube form with a wall thickness of about 1/8". This meant that to get enough material, the tube sections needed to be split and flattened, which is a surprisingly difficult task even when the ti is very hot.

The implant was more complex than I envisioned, with mechanical anchors actuated by a screw drive.

The pipe sections were cut and, after much aggravation, successfully flattened!

Now, to trace, cut, and file the 3 1/4" femur shapes.

I couldn't get the shapes as intricate as I wanted, due to my tools being more appropriate for large blades, but I'd say they turned out pretty good!

 

[Mecha]

From here the project spiraled out of control a bit, which is normal. It was requested to make a kogatana [little companion knife for a katana] and kozuka [handle for a kogatana] out of the remaining alloy. Since 6al4v ELI doesn't make a very good blade unless it's carbidized, it was decided to make the kozuka handle out of the implant's base, and fashion a blade out of hardenable VT23.

Kozuka:

The kozuka was pretty simple, but the blade tang had to be carefully shaped to fit snugly within the hole bored through the center. This was done with files.

The blade was given a right-hand chisel grind.

Then I found out the customer was left-handed. Derp. He said it was fine, but I'm not going to send a right-hand custom piece like this to a lefty. Since I already had a pattern, it was fairly quick to remake the blade, and this time the fitment of the tang was even better.

In the end it turned into a pretty neat non-traditional take-down kogatana, I'd say!

The final task was to use the remaining pipe section to make some simple lanyard beads.

Success! Thanks for looking. :]

Stay tuned for more titanium stuff that makes me want to beat my head on the wall when making it and maybe just go get a job at WalMart instead, such as "Buhurt champion competition longsword," "Plate gladius," and "San mai titanium alloy naginata blade."

 

[WValtakis]

Badass! Super cool stuff as always, Sam

 

[Mecha]

Badass! Super cool stuff as always, Sam

Ty sir

 

[SharpBits]

That’s a very cool project!

 

[jlauffer]

When I saw the title I was expecting something like wolverine claws. But this is cool too!

 

[Danke42]

Bet that hurt to remove.

 

[Mecha]

When I saw the title I was expecting something like wolverine claws. But this is cool too!

Some day I'll make a pair of tekko kagi, which is the closest thing to irl Wolverine claws.

 

[Lorien]

fuckin eh bro!