Jarod Todd: Double Agent Bowie, HAND forged, KEYHOLE ANTLER handle

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Dago Red

Joined
Jun 16, 2008
Messages
987
Hi guys, so excited to get to post this here. I'll give the quick version here for those that just like to get to the pictures:

Monster hand forged 5160 Bowie knife, named "Double Agent" because it has a hand forged only (no power hammer, no press) so a REAL forged finish. This is what it looks like guys. Even the clip was all hammered in. Then above the damascus guard it has a KEYHOLE antler handle. that's right, has that been done before, we don't know, it has been now though and hopefully Jarod will be along to share more, because more work went into just the handle of this knife than the entire damascus cutlass he made me. The whole thing is deceptive, it looks like something that Jeremiah Johnson would have, while the time in fit and finish is equivalent to a display only piece.

It was so awesome that I decided to send it off to Jim Coop to do his work. I'm glad I did, I never could have captured it this well. Jim is great to work with, organized, professional, fast. A great experience, I look forward to using his services again.

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Here is the story for those of you that like collaborate with your knifemaker.

I found a damascus seax that Jarod had made, a little under two years ago. Then later bought a damascus cutlass from him that I really needed for a costume party. He's a mad scientist and I am a bit crazy too so we found each other BS'ing via text and had some big plans for some cool knives. right around the time he was going to start on those I got distracted and threw a huge (about 20" in the end) wrench into the works.

One day after doing some light offroading with my brother and a buddy of ours we went to said buddies house for scotch and he was showing us his knives. You could tell that like a lot of guys he loved his knives, sadly though he wasn't aware of bladeforums and what could be found out there. He's also a big guy, I think 6'5" and over 400lbs. His birthday was coming up and I text my brother one night and said,"hey, let's have a custom knife made for Don, sized for him". Same time I was texting Jarod, "Hey brother! I have a cool idea, what do you think about a rustic bowie for a big friend of mine for his birthday, x amount of timeline (I think at this point it was about a month, February of this year)"

While waiting for my brother me and Jarod were flying, big knife, antler handle, real forged knife. he was already sending me pics of what antler he had when my brother got back to me.

little brother: how much?
me: 250 (I actually knew it would be more but was ok with paying more than half)
LB: what!? there's no way I could spend that much on a knife, thats crazy! (he's not a knife guy, he literally owns two knives, one of which I bought him and one of which was my dad's buck 110. and this friend the knife was gonna be for is my brothers karate mentor, surrogate father etc. etc.)

I said forget you, I'm gonna do it anyways though because me and Jarod were so excited. What happend though was as the ideas got wilder, and the time and effort involved got out of hand I couldn't justify spend all that on a knife I wasn't gonna keep :D (Jarod pulled me out of the fire though, he had an oversized edition of his Second Amendment knife that he hooked me up with, hollow grind, copper inset tubing, buddy Don loved it)

The first stage was this huge, hand forged blade. We had talked about it and he explained that "brute d'forge" (spelling?) is almost always a fake finish put on, or guys do the whole blade, heat it up and take the hammer to it. This literally was forged out, even the clip, (he has proof in pics too) and only grinding was for the bevel and the edge.

I had picked this knarly, so ugly is was beautiful piece of antler he had. Big piece, beautiful crown, had some moss like almost growing in it stuff too. you had to have vision!

By the time he finished the blade forging, which of course was way more work than using the power hammer, I had decided I was going to keep it. Well that gave us a whole different budget to work from. He had some damascus on hand from some experimenting he'd been doing with his newly built Sas'Squash press. and then I don't know who suggested it but the htought of a keyhole handle came up. I'd never seen it and he hadn't heard of it. I'm gonna let him talk about how hard it was, I'll just say that antler isn't forgiving, the metal has to be bent and filed to match, and the fit on this is perfect. I'm hoping he'll do some WIP for us on this.

I'd loved the copper work he had done on the other knife I gave my buddy and he's done some copper casting and riveting work on other projects and decided to finish this off that way. It's very deceptive, a non-knife guy would just see a rustic, scary knife. Those of us on here can tell the amount of time and effort that went into this. I think it was about 6 months before I got it. Well worth the wait. And did I mention it is frighteningly sharp? Anybody see the movie Seraphim Falls? If this had been the knife Pierce Brosnan carried then it'd have won an Oscar for best supporting actor. :)

I hope you guys enjoy it, check out this pic for scale:
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That knife looks sweet in the picture. But then seeing it in your hand it really looks even cooler! It seems like it fits perfectly in the hand with that curved handle
 
PaulDiStefano said:
That knife looks sweet in the picture. But then seeing it in your hand it really looks even cooler! It seems like it fits perfectly in the hand with that curved handle
Click to expand...

It does fit great, sometimes there’s a piece that just feels great, just naturally. Usually though, in my limited experience w a couple antler handled knives I have, it feels good in one hand, this one though feels great in both hands. I’m thinking about working on my left hand knife skills.

Hopefully Jarod can show the video he sent me when he got done sharpening it.

Red
 
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