I just finished my first class from Murray Carter!

[somber]

Last week I had the extreme privileged to attend Murray Carter's 5½ day Intensive Bladesmithing Course - it was simply incredible. The amount of information I learned about using my eyes, knife design, bladesmithing, proper techniques for forging, annealing, cold forging, heat treating, blade profile, presentation, straightening- the list goes on! - was incredible. I understand more about knives from this week long course than I ever imagined, every bit of information was concise and easy to understand. The whole entire process simply further solidified how amazing the skills that Murray Carter, 17th Generation Yoshimoto Bladesmithing, has. Here are some brief pictures, and later tonight I'll upload some pictures of the finished products.

Here is some pictures of my neck knife after heat treat, ground, and being prepared for handles.
I chose to make some hefty, thick handles from Ironwood.

Here is a picture of my 9½" camp knife before handles were epoxied on. The handle is redwood burl with a giraffe bone bolster.
The green liners looked fantastic with the color of the giraffe bone. I used silver pins to peen the handle.

Both knives were made from white steel. It's an incredible feeling to hold a knife that you forged yourself. I had a hand in every single process of these knives. At the beginning of the week Murray had a hand in helping us, by the end we were designing and doing almost every process with only his watchful eye and verbal guidance. I now understand that the only way to forge cutting edge knives, you need to truly walk on the edge. I feel extremely blessed to possess these and I will cherish them forever.:thumbup:

If you haven't seen Murray Carter's knives, you need to look at them right now! www.cartercutlery.com


(more pictures to come)

 

[Jesse D.L]

awesome, looks like a good time!

 

[nevermind35]

Very nice my friend. Thanks again for the info you sent me on the course it looks like you had a hell of a time. I can only imagine being there for almost 6 days learning all the tricks of the trade.

I really like your neck knife there. Those are some scary awesome grinds! I like the nice chamfering you did on the tang holes too. Great job.

 

[somber]

Taking a break from my day, but here is a quick shot of the knives I forged last week.

edit to add: the spot on my kitchen knife looks like I forgot to clean off some scale, or a erroneous hammer strike, but it's really a fuzz ball.

 

[230grains]

I like them all, but the necker really stands out. Excellent work, you should be proud.

 

[somber]

I like them all, but the necker really stands out. Excellent work, you should be proud.

Thank you for the gracious compliment, I do really love the necker. It's my first ironwood handle knife, and it fits perfect for my hand. The handles (as you can see) are a little bit thicker than most, I think the handle is around 16mm thick.

The wharncliffe brute was really, really difficult to make. That bolster was so difficult, and you can't see from that photo, but in this one you can see that I chamfered the inside of the bolster.

I had some issues with the bolster, so the knife looks handle heavy (because I had to increase it's presence on the knife, otherwise it would have just been a little nib of giraffe bone) but it fits my hand like a glove.