New Student Work

scottishsmith24

scottishsmith24

Joined
Sep 4, 2012
Messages
416
This past week I taught my first course at the North House Folk School up in Grand Marais, Minnesota. The topic of the class was the making of a pattern welded puukko knife, handle, and sheath in five days. The course ended up having eight extremely hard working and enthusiastic students a couple of whom had a little smithing experience. The bulk of the class was brand new to knife making which makes me even more proud of how they did. They started with a fifteen layers of 15n20 and 1084 at 1/8 inch thick per layer, working in pairs with strikers they had all achieved two folds by the end of day one and forged their blades the next day. The remaining three days was spent hand filing the blades and sanding them, making the handle, and the sheath. We ended up with a total of 42 hours in the course all said with everyone finishing their knives and all but two finishing their sheathes. One student decided he wanted to do more of a leuku as opposed to a puukko, but I think they came out great and was very proud of them.
But now for pictures!

The shop:



My demonstration knife:




And the students knives:















This one I was particularly proud of the student for his meticulous handle work:



The leuku:




Thanks for looking!

Robert
 
Those hardly look like the work of beginners at all. You must be a great teacher! Beautiful steel, great handles...VERY nice:thumbup::thumbup:
 
Really nice first knives, actually nice knives period.
Especially like the combinations of handle materials.
That building has a lot of character.
Thanks for giving us a look.
 
I definitely agree, 24, with you comments about the one student. Not sure if he was one that had done smithing work before but his eye for proportions and putting together of the handle material is very well done and his blade is the most interesting to my eye. He certainly should be rewarded with many congrats.
 
Thank you for the comments everyone, I am very proud of how they did especially considering how much hand work was done over five days. The "best" puukko that came out of this class was made by a student with a very small amount of forging experience, but no knife making experience. He was extremely detailed oriented especially concerning his lay out which is what I find most new people rushing through. Based on this class I can't wait to teach my next one, a lot of work but definitely great working with them. :)
 
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