Official 2011 MINI KITH photo thread

bladsmth said:
To keep scale realistic, all things must match. The thickness at the spine, and the handle thickness and length are the most common wrong places. They often work out to be a 5/8" thick blade or a 2" thick handle, by scale. Use your micrometer while working, and keep removing material until the scale is right. An easy way of doing this is to use scales that are somewhat easy for your brain to convert. 10:1 is easy, as all you do is move the decimal a place.16" = 1.6".
25:1 is easy as all you do is read in mm and think in inches. thus a 36" sword with a .380" thick blade is a 36mm mini with a .380mm blade.


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A higher layer count of much finer layers would have probably helped with this one.
 
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Duly noted, however, I prefer the low layer count damascus where you can actually see the layers. I believe the original piece was 40 layer that I had special made. I tried making one out of 400 layer and you couldn't see the layers at this scale.

All the problems I had with the damascus delaminating, I'm glad I got this much out of it.
 
Charlie, I know you had problems trying to make damascus. It is a learning process full of failures in the begining.....and later,too.
The mini came out good, and the bold pattern looks like camo. I like the knife.

To make a damascus mini to scale it should have the same number of layers, or close to it, as a full size blade. I have used 1300 layer material and the layers were still distinct. 20 to 40 layers looks good. 100 is about perfect.
Contrary to what seems logical, the layers appear larger on a mini than a full size blade.To be a true scale, the layer count should be the scale ratio, too. That would make a 1/4 scale bowie with a full size blade of 100 layers need a 400 layer mini damascus. This is not usually necessary unless there is a need for exact scale reproduction.

To make mini damascus by hand, take a bar of 1"X1/8"" damascus ( 160 layer twist or random thunderforged is cheap and forges well), and in about six heats you can draw the end out to a sheet about 4X1.5X.08". File/sand this clean and you have a nice sheet of .04" mini damascus with about 120 layer count. Perfect for making 1/12 scale to 1/16 scale blades.
 
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