- Joined
- Sep 16, 2002
- Messages
- 1,577
Not quite a year ago when I first got interested in knife making and forging, I had the opportunity to spend 2 days with Tai Goo in Tucson getting a taste of everything. Well, I'm finally ready to call the knife and sheath done, so here are some pics.
Spending time with Tai was quite a cool experience. It is amazing to see what a master can do with a hammer and anvil, and especially in his case what he can do with a minimum of tools and electricity. Unfortunately I didn't bring a camera along (or maybe I did and forgot to take any shots), so I didn't document the whole process or the time I was there, but here are a few progress shots.
I had never swung a hammer, handled hot steel, or anything else like that so I pounded on this blank a little but Tai did most of the forging. I brought it home and tempered it in my kitchen oven, then cleaned it up, installed the handle slabs, and made the sheath.
Here is a fairly early picture of the blank (I can't remember how much I had done to it at this point
Not really knowing what I was doing, I decided I needed to draw file the tang flat so I could get a gap-free installation of the handle material. I spent a lot of hours both draw filing and then sanding flat on a marble surface. I kept going and going, but no matter what I did I couldn't get the concave dip out of the middle of the tang. I don't know if this was poor technique, because the blade had been differentially hardened already and was wearing at an uneven rate, or what, but unfortunately the clean area creeped up further into the ricasso area that I had planned.
Finally, I gave up trying to make it perfect as I didn't want to totally ruin the lines of the knife. Here you can see the gap still remaining. It turns out that you can't really see it once it was epoxied, so I wish I had stopped sooner:
Once I had the handle installation complete, I started on the sheath. This is my second completed sheath following along with Wild Rose' DVD, and my first attempt at carving leather. I screwed up the layout of the carving and didn't realize it until the carving was done and the sheath sewn up. I was so happy with the way my first carving attempt turned out that I decided I didn't care and kept the sheath!
Sheath dyed and finished:
Completed knife and sheath together:
Thanks for reading! Comments and critiques are always appreciated.
Spending time with Tai was quite a cool experience. It is amazing to see what a master can do with a hammer and anvil, and especially in his case what he can do with a minimum of tools and electricity. Unfortunately I didn't bring a camera along (or maybe I did and forgot to take any shots), so I didn't document the whole process or the time I was there, but here are a few progress shots.
I had never swung a hammer, handled hot steel, or anything else like that so I pounded on this blank a little but Tai did most of the forging. I brought it home and tempered it in my kitchen oven, then cleaned it up, installed the handle slabs, and made the sheath.
Here is a fairly early picture of the blank (I can't remember how much I had done to it at this point
Not really knowing what I was doing, I decided I needed to draw file the tang flat so I could get a gap-free installation of the handle material. I spent a lot of hours both draw filing and then sanding flat on a marble surface. I kept going and going, but no matter what I did I couldn't get the concave dip out of the middle of the tang. I don't know if this was poor technique, because the blade had been differentially hardened already and was wearing at an uneven rate, or what, but unfortunately the clean area creeped up further into the ricasso area that I had planned.
Finally, I gave up trying to make it perfect as I didn't want to totally ruin the lines of the knife. Here you can see the gap still remaining. It turns out that you can't really see it once it was epoxied, so I wish I had stopped sooner:
Once I had the handle installation complete, I started on the sheath. This is my second completed sheath following along with Wild Rose' DVD, and my first attempt at carving leather. I screwed up the layout of the carving and didn't realize it until the carving was done and the sheath sewn up. I was so happy with the way my first carving attempt turned out that I decided I didn't care and kept the sheath!
Sheath dyed and finished:
Completed knife and sheath together:
Thanks for reading! Comments and critiques are always appreciated.
and your FIRST sheath.... I dunno how many I've made :barf: and yours looks better. :thumbup: 
Probably going to fling all my leather tools into the yard and let the dogs chew on them for a bit. 
. Ok I'm heading to shop to work on my carving skills then ....
