The Fred Bear Project

J

Jason Fry

Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Messages
3,188
I've got another pretty big one that I'm setting up for Atlanta. The idea is a bowie incorporating Fred Bear archery items. I have a piece of a 1966 Kodiak bow riser with the signature stripe. I've got some vintage Razorhead broadheads. Not sure what else we'll use yet.

The plan is to put the broadheads in a canister, but that'll be kind of boring by itself, just some flecks or lines in a sea of gray. So to make it interesting, I'm putting in a 15n20 arrow. I'll fill the space around the arrow with the heads. Although it may be fine, I don't want the cutting edge to be can steel, so I'm going to try and laminate some twist bars to make kind of a "picture window." It won't be near as complex as the Battleship piece, but that last weld setup will be interesting.

Here's the teaser video. (Also, I learned that even 10% volume of background music is LOUD)
 
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Stuck the billets before lunch. Was working on the meteorite billet and a couple of other random pattern component billets. Also had to disassemble and rebuild the spring pack on the power hammer. Doing that gave the canisters a good long soak.

Meteorite billet is at 25 layers ready for a restack. Probably do 100 layer on the restack, then do one more time to get it to 400.

I have a billet of random at 90 layers that I'll probably restack to 360.

AAAAAND then I f'ed up the Fred Bear. Lost track of my billet orientation and sliced the loaf the wrong direction.

All is not lost, however. The inside of the loaf we'll be able to clearly see the broadheads. Cleaned up the cut joint and I'll weld it back together and slice it the other way. I wonder if I'll ever get to a point where shit just goes together right. In the mean time, I'm learning how to fix stuff.
 
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Test etch again after rough grinding. The twist looks like stars when you grind to the middle of it. The arrow is obvious. The streaks beside the arrow are the broadheads.

Post-quench.
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Bear hair arrived. Will use some in the sheath later. I will have a little bit of shop time this weekend. Goal will be to get the knife glued up, but that’s a tough climb. Still have to finish polishing, do the fit shape and polish on the guard, and do whatever I am going to do on the handle design.
 
Progress today. Guard roughed in and shaping started. Then I moved to handle fitting and shaping. Nothing at all square or even symmetrical about a recurve bow riser!

 
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A bit of final fit work, then polish everything. Then HT the guard and re-polish. Then etch all the damascus, after final polish. Also lack the Bear medallion over the fastener on the butt. There’s a corby there now holding it all together, that’ll get buried under the Bear.

Goal is still to get it glued up tomorrow. Maybe, maybe not.
 
Sheath layout. I’m on the road trip through the weekend, be next week sometime before I get back to this.

 
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