Inspired by "Rust is only skin deep... "

Overmountain

Overmountain

Joined
May 2, 2013
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I would have posted this in the gallery section, but since his post was here, I figured I would post mine here too... lol.
Although not nearly as nice as Robert's "Dandelion" digger, I got motivated. I had an old piece of nice and rusted carbon steel from a defunct factory, as well as some very very old copper pipe from the same. I also happened to have a chunk of spalted maple off the farm sitting around and figured I would stick em together and see what came out.

I had been sitting on the steel, and really liked the pitting and patina that it had picked up after nearly a century of use, but really didn't know what I wanted to do with it. After Robert's post, I figured I would just freestyle it and see what came out...

I left the pitting on the steel to what extent I could, split the copper pipe and flattened it out and then hid a few pins under the spalted maple scales. The scales were not stabilized with resin and such, but were treated to a little soak to firm em up, and then treated with nothing more than a sand and finishing paste wax. I kept the grind minimal on the blade as I wanted to retain as much of the old rusty pitted patina as possible, and the steel was less than 1/8" thick anyway. I went back and added a little dark patina chemically to the copper, as the original patina was outstanding but impossible to keep due to having to work it and heat it up, etc. Maple scales are bookmatched as well...


Thanks to Robert Dark for the creative motivation...

Cheers!
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Oh, and excuse the pictures. Cell phone camera and it doesn't like to focus well... under fluorescent lights...
 
From an aesthetic quality it looks very steam punkish and awesome. More importantly, how does she cut?
 
Thank you. I was shooting for a cross between a piecemeal tool and a 50+ year old knife found in a sock drawer type of thing... I love old tools, farm implements, car parts, etc..
It cuts really well. I started with a recovered piece that was about 12"x12". I guessed that it was tool steel as it was used on a functional bit of some type of feed chute. Looked like it somehow separated product into split streams or something and I guessed it would have had to be strong stuff. I was originly just going to spark test it and make some shop tools and whatnot out of it. I ended up playing with several sections of it, and found it annealed easily, worked easily, and took a nice heat treat procedure that I use for my 1075... Assuming this piece holds up as well as the shop scaper/cutter I made out of it, should be a tough little knife.

I am playing with sheath ideas right now and maybe an opinion or two would help me out. I was thinking simple foldover friction sheath, little or no tooling, but had also considered something that held just the blade low on the sheath with a simple strap across the midsection for retention...

Thanks for looking...
 
Those scales turned out amazing! Guess I will be buying some spalled maple. I have never used it before. Leather pouch style sheath for sure. Classic.
 
Thank you both. I was also leaning toward that type of sheath and its the wifey's vote as well. If you do get spalted wood to work with (it is relatively easy to find in the wild BTW) get stabilized wood if you want it to be easy to work with. The raw dried stuff needs to be treated with wood hardener as its basically rotten, and even then it will sand unevenly unless care is taken to properly support your sandpaper. The spalt lines have a tendency to smear a little and it will stain with skin oils quickly as well. A pencil eraser will clean it up quickly though. The raw dried wood gives a more traditional appearance, but the stabilized stuff is knock down gorgeous when polished out...
 
I may have to give that maple a try. I have gotten so caught up in trying to use the most exotic hardwoods I just missed good old maple! No chance of me finding it in the wild though. I live in Los Angeles. There is a place about 20 min. from my house called eisenbrand. He has almost every exotic hardwood you could think of, and he is a real nice guy. I think I have seen some spalted maple there before.
 
Hopefully not violating anything here as I am not affiliated with this company any more than I have purchased some stuff from him, but Gerst Hardwoods is a terrific place to look for specialty wood scales. His are almost all oversize, impeccably stabilized, and planed square and true right out of the gate. He sells a lot on the bay under username blue78ta, and has both typical scale sized pieces and larger blocks. He can also supply custom sizes. I purchased a set of dyed and stabilized sycamore fleck scales from him and it was some of the best workable material I have seen. He will be at the blade show from what I understand with a lot of stuff to display. He said it will basically be his coming out party. His customer service is also bar none. A great place to look if you don't have a local source or need that extra special material...
For a lot of my stuff, I have a relatively well wooded family farm and have been able to find nice hardwoods, including some downed old growth American chestnut that I am working on drying. I had to cut deeper than deep into an old down log to get at it, but I have my fingers crossed it will turn out well... For spalted woods I look near areas of fresh fall for the tell tale signs of spalt setting in and let it develop naturally. Have checked some logged areas around here as well with owner permission and discovered discarded crotch cuts and even burls that were discarded. When going for sheer board footage smaller mills see these items as simply taking up space on the truck and leave em discarded.
Spalted maple has to be one of my favorites....
 
WHAT ??? You mean that after almost 66 years, I finally "Inspired" someone ? Geez.... I may have discovered a new journey in life as an "Inspiration Specialist" :)

That is a pretty nifty looking knife you have there. The Extended) liner treatment proves that you were thinking outside the box.

Well done.

Robert
 
Yes! You did inspire me for sure. I like your blade immensely by the way. Just my style, clean and flawlessly executed... I was on the fence with the extended copper liners but the wifey liked it... (those compass keychains in the one pic are made by her.) I am glad it turned out, a real pain to retain the patina in specific areas and clean away others neat and trim enough to get everything attached.
Thank you for the inspiration sir, hope I didn't step on any toes... I truly meant it as sincere flattery :)
 
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