The Z Blade, WIP

[AlteredMopar]

Some buddies and I do a thing called Branson Z Fest. Every year we get together about 150 Nissan Z cars in Branson,Mo and drive, show, and socialize. This year we thought it would be cool to have a knife to commemorate the event, which is at the end of May or first weekend of June if anyone is interested. Regardless, here are some prelims of the knife. Not real sure on the handle, probably G-10 or carbon fiber. It's ATS-34, 3/16.

 

[P. McKinley]

Interesting design to say the least.
The grinds are well done and the overall profile looks fine but, you have a whole bunch of particularly nasty stress risers created with that "Z" (which is quite nicely done btw) that may cause issues during heat treat. I hope it fairs well.

I look forward to watching the progress here.

Peter

 

[AlteredMopar]

My thoughts are the same about stress fractures. I wondered if the different thicknesses of metal would cause me problems by heat treating. I'm still real green at this. What seems like a good idea at the time, isn't always.

 

[Lorien]

as a commemorative piece, it looks pretty good. The cutout and finishing work looks quite nice.
As a knife to be used, fogettaboutit! That cutout is NO GOOD, from that perspective.
With that being said, highly polished carbon fiber scales would look very trick.

 

[AlteredMopar]

Finally got it done. Still have some "clean up" polish to do. Ended up with Black G-10 and Carbon Fiber with nickle silver. No cracks or baddness during heat treating. I was a little worried, but it was all good. It's a little harder than I like(rc60+), but I don't expect this knife to be used much if any. The silver really added to the over all heft of the knife, but balanced it well. Was not my intention, but I'll take it.