My first custom!

J

jaseman

Joined
Jul 28, 2016
Messages
1,033
A coworker of mine has a family member (who wishes to remain anonymous) who does mostly early American style forgework (18th century knives, tools, etc). As a thank you, for helping him out over the years, he had a knife made for me, to my specs. So I sent him some drawings, and after some back and forth with the maker, I finally have the knife in hand.

It's hand forged from reclaimed, high carbon steel, but the exact composition is unknown. He's assured me it is properly heat treated and file tested, and will stand by his work. As an added bonus, the bird's eye maple scales are reclaimed from my coworkers 100+ year old farmhouse, and came from the stairtreads when he redid them.

This will be an EDC for camping, hiking, and general woods use. Hope you like, because I know I don't!


My original drawing along with the unfinished blade. As soon as I saw it, I told him to leave the forge marks instead of polishing them out!
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Final knife, which I received a few weeks ago
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Fits nicely in my hand
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Bird's eye maple scales direct from my friends stair treads. The sheath is hand made and hand waxed as well.
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Fell in love with the raw forge marks as soon as I saw them!
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Gratuitous filework shot
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Very handsome blade. I bet the handle could be made to really pop with some ultra high grit sandpaper & oil.
 
W. Anderson said:
Not icehawk, but I've had great results on wooden AK and SKS furniture with linseed oil.
Click to expand...

I love TruOil because it can be applied and manipulated to any level of satin to polish, and touched up any time with more TruOil. Linseed based with some added chems to dry or harden etc.
 
I was thinking linseed oil... possibly mineral oil with a beeswax mixed in. Was kinda wondering if my Boos Board Cream would be good for it, since it's a food-grade mineral oil and wax combo.

Regardless, I think something needs done. Was out splitting firewood in the snow yesterday, and now I can feel the grain of the wood base raised from the moisture. So I need to knock the grain down and protect the scales somehow, to make sure it stays nice for a long time.
 
If you are considering wax, then Renaissance Wax. It is supposed to be safe on most materials.

And starting to collect custom knives is more like a roller coaster. You might as well just let go of the handle bars and fly screaming forward.
 
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