Lurker coming out of the woods

[midnight soda]

Hi,
I'm an amateur knifemaker from the black forest in germany, and decided to make an introduction thread here. I started I think around 2020, if memory serves, and most of the knives I make, are either gifts, or made to order from people I personally know, so I'm by no means a professional, or a production. As I'm pretty bad about documenting/taking pictures while the knives are still in my posession, unless specified by the recipient, I sadly don't have all that many pictures to post here, but I managed to scrape some together at least.
Full transparency, the main reason I finally pulled the trigger was because of last year's KITH, where a friend of mine participated, and convinced me to do so as well, as it seemed like a ton of fun. Before that I mainly just lurked around, reading up on stuff that seemed interesting, and sometimes for inspiration, and problem solving.

I did take a video of this one, because I really liked how the cocobolo looks with some carnauba wax, as it was my first time using it. sadly the player, that works in the preview, doesn't seem to want to open in the thread itself, so here's a link for now

https://imgur.com/kmVlOUn

Cheers!

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Midnight Soda is a friend of D Bloch. They share a workspace.
I have been in contact with him, and he seems like a nice fellow.
I am going to add him to the KITH list.

 

[GRapp]

I like those handles.

 

[Glen Juntunen]

Nice work! Those handles are beautiful!

 

[midnight soda]

Thank you!
The first 2 are olive and tulipwood respectively, both with about 5-6 coats of tru oil, if I recall correctly. Next 2 are olive again, and either pink ivory, or red heart, i can't remember sadly, also oil finish on both.
The nakiri is Kingswood, with a buffed wax finish, chinese cleaver is a 4 piece brass and cocobolo, also wax finish, and the last one is ebony-german silver-honduran rosewood, that i believe also got a carnauba wax finish on the buffing wheel.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Overall, really nice knives and handles.

Constructive criticism:
On the deba (last photo) - The handle is a bit too fat. It should fit flush with the spine on the blade. This is a common error by newer makers.
On the Chinese cleaver - Those dark spots look like decarb that has not been sanded away. Again, a common issue for newer makers.

Both issues are not major and will change with time and experience.

 

[midnight soda]

Thank you, I was wondering why the handle looked kinda off, but wasn't able to pinpoint the reason. I will try for the next time I'm doing this style of handle.

On the cleaver, if we're looking at the same dark spots, those are actually shiny spots, that were not/badly picked up by my phone camera, as that knife's hamon doesn't really get across well on this photo.
I ground the whole blade from 3mm thickness to finished dimension, all after heat treating, and also restarted the handsanding on that one about 3 times, back to 1200grit, as I wasn't happy with the final look of the hamon/etch, so it would surprise me if there still was decarb, but I'm not an expert, and would accept my lack of knowledge about that subject, if one would say that my way of thinking isn't correct.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Good, photos can be misleading because of light and camera angle.