Erin Burke
KnifeMaker...ish
- Joined
- May 19, 2003
- Messages
- 1,330
Good morning guys. This knife has been mostly completed for the better part of a month, but I finally got around to finishing the sheath and taking (last minute) photos on Monday night. I'm guessing it's fairly obvious where the inspiration for this fighter came from. I was very-much intrigued by Paranee/Wheeler idea of a thick-bladed fighter with aggressive distal taper... so that's the direction that I took with this one. It is the first knife I've done where I started as thick as 1/4" at the guard. I'm happy with the results.
Some Stats:
Length: 14-1/8"
Blade: 8-7/16" (tip to choil) - the clip is sharp.
Steel: Differentially heat-treated W2 from Aldo, Flat-Ground
Handle: Stabilized and "toasted" metallic flash Redwood from Mark at Burl Source
Guard: 416SS with black G10 and Copper spacers
My Dad is the youngest of 13 siblings and grew up near the small town of Wawota, Saskatchewan. He came to me a few months back requesting that I build a knife for one of his older brothers who will be turning 80 years old this summer. Dad didn't have many requirements except, "make a good one so I can brag about it."
I hope that this does the trick.
Right now I have Ernie Grospitch working on a custom stencil... edited multiple times to meet my Dad's aesthetic requirements ("No... use a SANS SERIF font.") Here's a mockup of the approved stencil.
Just a couple additional comments. First, this knife has a nice active hamon... I just didn't capture it in this image. I hope to have time to take additional photos once the stencil etching is done. Second, I'm really happy with the results of "toasting" the redwood. This probably isn't the most common toasting recipe out there... but I dissolved a bit of steel wool in some FeCl, and swabbed the resultant onto the wood. I followed this up with a light toasting with the torch followed by a final rub-down with steel wool. Finally, I went through my old-reliable tung-oil finish routine. It's difficult to see from the static photo, but, in addition to darkening the wood, this process also brought out more of the flash-n-sparkle in Mark's wood.
This is how the redwood was colored before toasting.
Thanks for looking.
Erin
Edited to add iPhone photos of etched knife:
Some Stats:
Length: 14-1/8"
Blade: 8-7/16" (tip to choil) - the clip is sharp.
Steel: Differentially heat-treated W2 from Aldo, Flat-Ground
Handle: Stabilized and "toasted" metallic flash Redwood from Mark at Burl Source
Guard: 416SS with black G10 and Copper spacers
My Dad is the youngest of 13 siblings and grew up near the small town of Wawota, Saskatchewan. He came to me a few months back requesting that I build a knife for one of his older brothers who will be turning 80 years old this summer. Dad didn't have many requirements except, "make a good one so I can brag about it."
I hope that this does the trick.Right now I have Ernie Grospitch working on a custom stencil... edited multiple times to meet my Dad's aesthetic requirements ("No... use a SANS SERIF font.") Here's a mockup of the approved stencil.
Just a couple additional comments. First, this knife has a nice active hamon... I just didn't capture it in this image. I hope to have time to take additional photos once the stencil etching is done. Second, I'm really happy with the results of "toasting" the redwood. This probably isn't the most common toasting recipe out there... but I dissolved a bit of steel wool in some FeCl, and swabbed the resultant onto the wood. I followed this up with a light toasting with the torch followed by a final rub-down with steel wool. Finally, I went through my old-reliable tung-oil finish routine. It's difficult to see from the static photo, but, in addition to darkening the wood, this process also brought out more of the flash-n-sparkle in Mark's wood.
This is how the redwood was colored before toasting.
Thanks for looking.
Erin
Edited to add iPhone photos of etched knife:
Last edited:
