My Latest Knife

Dave Kelly

Dave Kelly

Joined
Dec 17, 2003
Messages
597
Hi, This one is made for a big handed leftie but needed to be California legal carry. I wish they would print a knife laws for dummies book, I think the law states under 3" for legal concealed carry.

2 15/16" Beautiful Bill Buxton damascus that you can't really see in the %$*^& scan but in person it is very nice
3 metal mokume with black, copper, brass spacers
desert ironwood burl scales

The knife isn't dirty and muddy looking in person and one day I'll get a camera or better yet send them to Coop for some real pictures and I know many people don't like mokume so if you would be so kind to give me your opinions on the overall shape, I would appreciate it.
Thanks, Dave

orig.jpg
orig.jpg
 
That is one sweet folder! The bolster looks great, to me. It matches very well with the damascus and the figure in the slabs. I like the blade shape as well.
 
Thanks for the nice comments Mr. Bad

The knife isn't this gaudy in real life, I couldn't get my scanner to work this time.
I tried to get a better view of the beautiful damascus but this picture is the best that I could come up with and it still doesn't come close to doing it justice.

Thanks again, Dave

orig.jpg
 
schanz, Thank you for the comments.
btw, hopefully soon you'll post more pictures of the great looking knives that you make, Dave
 
A small tip for using the scanner.

Straight black can work for a lot of different blades, but if you are willing to experiment somewhat, you can bring out a surprising amount of detail with different backgrounds.

What I do is either find cloth or resume paper that is not "busy" and experiment taping them to the scanner until my scans reflect the details I think are important. Most commonly I've been using a very light gray resume paper, a rather big example can be seen at:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~maro0049/LCCbig.jpg

This isn't a professional pic and it wasn't really trying to be, and I didn't really edit it after the scan other than crop/resize and a small color correction I think (blade looked sorta green originally). However, it did reveal more of the knife and especially the stonewash of the blade than it would have if I had simply scanned it with the black background.

Strong colors have given me poor results, while pale colors and low-contrast marble effects seem to provide decent overall quality.
 
Robert Marotz said:
What I do is either find cloth or resume paper that is not "busy" and experiment taping them to the scanner until my scans reflect the details I think are important. Most commonly I've been using a very light gray resume paper, a rather big example can be seen at:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~maro0049/LCCbig.jpg
Click to expand...
It still kind of has a "scanned look" to it, but for non-professional pics just to show off knives on a forum, that looks really nice.
 
Yeah one can play with the shadows and distance/angle of the background to try to defeat some of the telltale signs of the "scanner perspective", but knife photography is an art that many find to be too inconvenient to do ourselves and too expensive to outsource, a scanner is often nearby and quite cheap and usually allows better control than the typical cheap webcam.

The point for me at least is not to fool the viewer into thinking it's real photography, but rather to show off the knife and its details in a very realistic and accurate way. Certainly not art, but it gets the job done pretty well. :)
 
Robert (Blinker) Thank You.

Robert Marotz,
Thank you for taking the time to try and help me with scanned images. I have tried different backgrounds such as, fabric, paper and poster board without much success. One of the hardest things for me in scanning knives is anything shiny, It always comes out much brighter than it really is. Your attached scanned image shows much more detail and clarity than I've been able to get and I will try your recommendation of the grey resume paper at different angles and distances. If you have the time and want to see my knives that I've tried scanning with different backgrounds (starts with knife #7) and want to offer other suggestions, that would be great. But when I finally make a knife that I'm really happy with I'm going to send it to Coop to photogragh because it will be a very memorable occasion :)
Thanks again, Dave

http://fototime.com/ftweb/bin/ft.dll/pictures?userid={09F0592E-EAB6-4349-8C53-65378226375D}&AlbumId={6FBDE27C-8F0E-4BA1-9CF5-AACC7BE7EEC2}
 
Dave, once again... great job. Keep this up and I gotta start saving my pennies for a "Dakcon" folder. So, do you have a website yet?
 
No website yet Mongo but it better be pretty soon, I'm going broke giving these things away :) Thanks, Dave
 
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