- Joined
- Dec 20, 2009
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- 4,421
OK, so you guys are never gunna believe this.
I was working at my milling machine, cutting a slot in a guard for a big Bowie, when I heard a noise in my forge room. I went to the door and opened it just a crack to see a chupacabra digging around in my beer fridge. As everyone knows, chupacabra means "goat sucker", they live by sucking the blood from goats, he had to be in there after the goat cheese, or the frozen goat yogurt.
I was just thinking this one had to be of the lesser known Arctic Chupacabra sub-species, you know, because I live in Fairbanks Alaska, and he had some fur on him as well as the customary snake-like scales. Just then, he looked over his shoulder at me and made a bee-line toward the open overhead door with a pint of my wife's favorite flavor of frozen goat yogurt, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. To let him get away with that would have been troubling for me so I hit the door closer button of the garage door with the quickness of a ninja or something else fast like that, maybe a chameleons tongue. Just as the door was getting to the bottom he slid under there like an experienced jewel thief, not so much like Kevin James in " Paul Blart, Mall Cop"
But here's something that many people don't know, even if they grew up around chupacabras, their tails come off when someone grabs it, just like a five-lined skink - It's an escape mechanism. So here I was left with this wiggling tail of an Arctic Chupacabra sticking out from under the door, what was I going to do with it? I thought about calling the State Office of Chupacabra Protection and Management Authority but I knew they would just take the tail away from me. What popped into my mind right away was, "I could make a really cool knife with this chupacabra tail", so I wrapped it in aluminum foil and put it in the freezer next to the remaining flavors of frozen goat yogurt, so I could save it till I had the time to deal with it properly. Chupacabras are seldom seen but they really are more common than people think, they are not threatened or endangered so the use of their' tails is not restricted.
Here's the thing though, the next time I went to look for the tail, it was gone. I wouldn't want to blame any one without knowing for sure, but it could be that my wife did something with it, she doesn't like to see strange animal parts in the freezer with food we eat, (I might have to get my own freezer) and besides, her Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough frozen goat yogurt was gone.
This event needs to be commemorated and it is the inspiration for the knife I'm working on now. I had to fabricate a handle with stuff I had around the shop. I hope it will resemble, in a small way, the colors and textures of the actual tail.
Here's the handle assembly, it has 87 pieces glued together, they include died sycamore, lace wood, bubinga and sheep horn.
making dies to put a scale pattern into the damascus for the blade
One side of the die finished. I'll heat up another piece of steel in the forge and press it into this one to form the other side of the die.
Thanks for watching, hope you like it. I only wish I had thought to get a picture of the chupacabra tail, then I wouldn't have to re-create solely it from memory.
More later
I was working at my milling machine, cutting a slot in a guard for a big Bowie, when I heard a noise in my forge room. I went to the door and opened it just a crack to see a chupacabra digging around in my beer fridge. As everyone knows, chupacabra means "goat sucker", they live by sucking the blood from goats, he had to be in there after the goat cheese, or the frozen goat yogurt.
I was just thinking this one had to be of the lesser known Arctic Chupacabra sub-species, you know, because I live in Fairbanks Alaska, and he had some fur on him as well as the customary snake-like scales. Just then, he looked over his shoulder at me and made a bee-line toward the open overhead door with a pint of my wife's favorite flavor of frozen goat yogurt, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. To let him get away with that would have been troubling for me so I hit the door closer button of the garage door with the quickness of a ninja or something else fast like that, maybe a chameleons tongue. Just as the door was getting to the bottom he slid under there like an experienced jewel thief, not so much like Kevin James in " Paul Blart, Mall Cop"
But here's something that many people don't know, even if they grew up around chupacabras, their tails come off when someone grabs it, just like a five-lined skink - It's an escape mechanism. So here I was left with this wiggling tail of an Arctic Chupacabra sticking out from under the door, what was I going to do with it? I thought about calling the State Office of Chupacabra Protection and Management Authority but I knew they would just take the tail away from me. What popped into my mind right away was, "I could make a really cool knife with this chupacabra tail", so I wrapped it in aluminum foil and put it in the freezer next to the remaining flavors of frozen goat yogurt, so I could save it till I had the time to deal with it properly. Chupacabras are seldom seen but they really are more common than people think, they are not threatened or endangered so the use of their' tails is not restricted.
Here's the thing though, the next time I went to look for the tail, it was gone. I wouldn't want to blame any one without knowing for sure, but it could be that my wife did something with it, she doesn't like to see strange animal parts in the freezer with food we eat, (I might have to get my own freezer) and besides, her Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough frozen goat yogurt was gone.
This event needs to be commemorated and it is the inspiration for the knife I'm working on now. I had to fabricate a handle with stuff I had around the shop. I hope it will resemble, in a small way, the colors and textures of the actual tail.
Here's the handle assembly, it has 87 pieces glued together, they include died sycamore, lace wood, bubinga and sheep horn.
making dies to put a scale pattern into the damascus for the blade
One side of the die finished. I'll heat up another piece of steel in the forge and press it into this one to form the other side of the die.
Thanks for watching, hope you like it. I only wish I had thought to get a picture of the chupacabra tail, then I wouldn't have to re-create solely it from memory.
More later
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