Kitchen peppers - wip

oldanvilyoungsmith

oldanvilyoungsmith

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Feb 7, 2011
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Working on a batch of herb choppers. 3 of em, handforged 1084, I should have them ground and HT'd tomorrow, and handled by next week.

1 of them is mom's, and the other two will be up for sale.

Trying to decide on handle material. Thinking curly maple on two, and maybe purple heart on the last, what do ya'll think?



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Bevels ground out

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Bevels hand sanded to 120

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Ready for HT (heading out to the shop to do that in a minute). Tangs ground down (the handles will extend farther than that, but I'll hand file and sand up to where I want them) and bevels sanded. The bottom one is mum's, as you can see, it's gettting some "special" treatment.

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Didn't get as much done today as I intended, but I have a good excuse. I spent part of my available free time working on this! -

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But, when I did get out to the shop, I got one the knives glued up. I'm going with brass bolsters and cm scales. Believe it or not, this is the first time I've done bolsters on a full tang, so I'm going to shape out this handle some and see how I like it, then get the others glued depending on how this one looks.

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Got the first one shaped, sanded, and stained, and I like how the bolsters look (as did the mother), so mums, and the other knife will get brass bolsters.

This first one has few more touches it needs on the handle, then a good sharpening. Should be done tonight, the others will be glued today, and finished soon.


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I have been working on these, seriously. As of yesterday, I have the other two knives handled, and the handles roughed out. I don't have anything to do tomorrow after church, so I hope to get at least one sanded and dyed tomorrow.


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Hey guys, I am going to finish these, seriously.

But I had to put them on hold for today (I was hoping to get at least one more finished today as I didn't have work) as I got a request from my brother for a rush job.

Heres a sneak peek -
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They weren't really knives, so I'm not gonna start a thread about em, but you can see more about them here (I can't put em on my website or FB yet, cuz the recipient might see them to soon, so sometime friday or saturday they'll be put up there).
 
Okay, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel now! (figuratively and literally, it's nice and sunny here today, almost hit 70!).

I have the other two's handle finish sanded and stained, now I'll be oiling them for about a week before I declare them done and post them for sale. In the next few days I'll be working on sharpening, and taking finished photos, as the handle oiling won't change the look of the handle.

The lower one is the first one done last week, the two uppers are the ones done today.

Oh, and the claying on Mum's blade turned out to fail. I've only done it before on 1080, and didn't realize how different 1080 was from Aldos 1084 in that arena.



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Yeah, I think Aldo's 1084 has too much Mn to show a hamon?

Those look awesome. What is the handle finish?
 
Geek, they're all curly maple.

Medicevans -

For finishing the curly maple I sand them down to 800, then use a trick called whiskering that Alan Longmire taught me for getting a good finish. I slightly dampen the wood, and when it dries, use very fine steel wool to remove the slightly raised grain. Then I apply majestic maple stain, something I picked up at the Blade show last year, I really like the color I get with it. Then I'm using boiled Linseed oil to seal the wood.
 
The BLO makes a satin finish I assume? Any way to use BLO and have a semi gloss?

They look phenomenal. Very nice.
 
With BLO (in my experience, I'm not expert) the finish depends on the wood and how you finished the wood. A harder wood (like ironwood or something) that has been higly polished, will be highly polished after the BLO. Something like curly maple, that isn't hard enough to really get buffed to high shine, will have the same look as before (Maybe slightly glossyer depending on how you do it).

This is all my experience of course, I could easily be wrong.
 
I actually found a mucb easier way to perform the whiskering step. I use a Vicks hot steam vaporizer. The steam dries really quick and seems to do a more thorough job of raising the grain. I do it between 400 grit and follow the process all the way to 1500. Man they really shine!
 
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