The "Ask Nathan a Question" Thread

Nathan the Machinist said:
^this. Right here. People, look at that. That is a Bowie knife. The stuff that people call a bowie knife isn't. I think it was designed by a TV executive. It's all make believe fantasy knife bullshit and it is, objectively, not a very good knife. The real thing was at least useful for something. Not great, but not terrible.
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I am undaunted by this negativity! I plan to make several more Bowies, each hopefully better than the last. I'm even in the process of getting some cable Damascus, likely to be low performance steel with possible flaws...
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Can we all agree to call it a bow-eee instead of a boo-eee. I don't care how it's "supposed" to be called. If Hispanics can call Jeasus "hay-sues", we can call Bowie bow-eee. If he pronounced it "boo-eee" that's fine, I don't care, he's allowed to be wrong. Anyways what's he going to do about it, his knife is dumb and he's dead.

There. I said it.
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Hispanics would enunciate "Jesus" more like "Hey, Seuss!"...except with no "y"... It's 'merkins tryina emulate Spanish that say "hay-sues" ;)😁

Agreed about the knife 👍
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Despite what they may say, that is not micarta. It may be a "micarta" brand of something, but it is not what we refer to as micarta, which is a phenolic base textile composite.

Real micarta uses a phenolic resin. That phenolic resin is amber and it turns brown. That color orange is not possible with real micarta any more than you're ever going to find a bright blue asphalt. It's just not in the chemistry. That resin is probably epoxy, or perhaps even a styrene polyester. I do not like the way these materials feel in my hand and I prefer not to use them. We use phenolic base micarta whenever we can. I like this material and it is what I use on my knives.

While a bright and colorful handle color looks kind of cool, I generally do not make functional choices based on aesthetic consideration.
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No, not aesthetic; functional. You have any idea how often I walk away from my knife outdoors, say for instance in the middle of 10 acres of coconuts? With typical grass height of 3 or 4 feet. Realize it one minute later, then spend a half hour looking for my knife. How many panic attacks have I had over this? You'd think I'd adapt, but when I'm working I'm moving fast and miss a beat once in a while. Bright orange/red/yellow handles would be awesome. And, I concur about Micarta being a better material for the purpose than G10. Linen Micarta is my favorite scale material. Guy and Ellie (Uh oh, did I just say "Voldemort"?) have offered some lovely red linen Micarta over the years. Some of the batches are bright, almost a cherry red. Any chance of getting some of that, any shade?

wayone said:
Maybe that’s what the lanyard holes are for.
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No. A lanyard is a major PITA for me. I pick up and set down my knife constantly when I'm working. I do use safety orange lanyards because the visibility is necessary for me, and I hate it. It's either too short to help with visibility, or so long it's just in my way. Really in my way. Unacceptably in my way. Grrr.
 
nandok said:
No, not aesthetic; functional. You have any idea how often I walk away from my knife outdoors, say for instance in the middle of 10 acres of coconuts? With typical grass height of 3 or 4 feet. Realize it one minute later, then spend a half hour looking for my knife. How many panic attacks have I had over this? You'd think I'd adapt, but when I'm working I'm moving fast and miss a beat once in a while. Bright orange/red/yellow handles would be awesome. And, I concur about Micarta being a better material for the purpose than G10. Linen Micarta is my favorite scale material. Guy and Ellie (Uh oh, did I just say "Voldemort"?) have offered some lovely red linen Micarta over the years. Some of the batches are bright, almost a cherry red. Any chance of getting some of that, any shade?


No. A lanyard is a major PITA for me. I pick up and set down my knife constantly when I'm working. I do use safety orange lanyards because the visibility is necessary for me, and I hate it. It's either too short to help with visibility, or so long it's just in my way. Really in my way. Unacceptably in my way. Grrr.
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I wonder if gluing an Apple AirTag to the butt of the handle might work?

P.S.
Definitely could've helped the CPK'er who posted a while back about having his bag of CPKs stolen.
 
Blues said:
Don't diss cable Damascus, bro'.
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Yeah. Cable Damascus is pretty cool.
nandok said:
Hispanics would enunciate "Jesus" more like "Hey, Seuss!"...except with no "y"... It's 'merkins tryina emulate Spanish that say "hay-sues" ;)😁

Agreed about the knife 👍
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I got reading about it more this afternoon about how Jesus would be pronounced. The Spanish pronunciation is closer than the English pronunciation. The way we say it in America "Gee-zuzs", it's so far off from the way the man would have pronounced his name that he probably wouldn't recognize you saying it.
 
The most common languages used back then for the Jews were both Aramaic (their original language) and ancient Greek (the common language of that time, being that they had been concurred by Rome who were heavily influenced by Greek culture).

In Aramic Jesus is "Yeshua"
In ancient Greek it is "Ιησούσ" which in English is "Iesous"
 
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