Tooling stamp idea, sheath and knife pics.

Salem, Ill take #74:p... partially cause its the flipside of #47 but mainly cause its my birth year, and this being Febuary my birth month, and that being the wonderfull Ibarra you promised delivery on......YES, its true this sweet piece is my bday present from my sons to me:D, Salem rocks!.. period!
I saw Salems Ibarra model and really liked its integral and the flow into the taper tang, Im a fan of tapered tangs and know what it takes to nail them, Im also a fan of the forge and a present slow learner of that side of this craft, having spent a bit of time on Salems site, and a few interactions here on BF it was a no brainer, I had to have him build one for me!

So to Salem..thank you my friend, Its everything I could have hoped for and I know how sweet it will feel in the hand!! You nailed it!!:thumbup:

Gotta love the insight on hollowing the radius on the front of the scales!!! :thumbup:

Greg
 
Cool idea, cool result and a beautifull knife.
We should see sheeps horn more often! :)
 
I think so too. It can be a little challenging to extract the exact scales you want from the rough slabs. AKS has a lot of good stuff for sheephorn. I think if I used it more I'd want to be able to pick my pieces in person from a large selection.
 
Salem, you mentioned star patterns... I know I'm not the first guy to think of this, but it occurs to me that socket wrenches have sort of a star-like pattern, especially 12-points and the ones for crazy "security" bolts. Of course, that would be an "inside" mark, not an "outside" mark like you would get with a modded hex wrench as you described. Various Torx wrenches could also be used as leather stamps.
 
Beautiful work! Starting to work with W2 because of the beautiful temper lines and had a question. I love the satin finish of your blade, but always thought you had to have a pretty high polish to show a hammon that pronounced. Mind sharing your trick for that temper line? Thanks in advance.
 
godog, a high polish is not necessary to show a strong line- it just gets the most out of the activity in the hamon, and lets one see everything clearly. For hamons like this, I hand sand to a nice clean 600 grit, wash with soap and water, and etch for 1-2 min. in a 1:5 ferric chloride/water solution. I pull the blade out, water rinse, spray with windex to neutralize the ferric, dry with paper towel. I smear Flitz polish on the blade (other polishes will work, if you can't find Flitz, but it can be ordered from knife supply houses) and rub the Flitz off, hard at the end, until all of the oxides have come off. A line will be visible at this point. I wash the blade hard with acetone, then soap and water several times to remove Flitz residue so the next etch won't be streaky, then etch again. Each time I etch the line becomes stronger. After 3-4 etches a point of diminishing returns is reached, at least for a 600 grit "user" hamon. After rubbing off the last Flitz polish, I lightly oil the blade to protect it.

This method produces a strong black habuchi (the actual line) with the entire polish being pretty opaque. Japanese stone polishes are of course the best, but the most laborious and difficult. They show incredible detail in the steel, with the hamon features being white rather than black. Hybrid polishes, using etchants, stones, papers, loose abrasives, polish pastes, or some combination thereof can produce very nice detailed white hamons as well. You have to charge a lot for a blade like this and the delicate beauty can detract a little from your willingness to work hard with such a blade...

This is not the best polish by far but it looks nice and does not cost too much. A nicer result can be obtained by sanding higher, say to 1500 grit, which does not take that much longer, and experimenting with pumice or rottenstone to scrub the yakiba (hardened portion) making it white, and loose carborundum, iron oxide, or other loose abrasive in oil to scrub the unhardened portion of the blade. I've been experimenting with tripoli buffing compound dissolved in oil, it's lightly abrasive and fine in size, yet the iron oxide in it may darken the steel where I want it. Still tuning that up.
 
Great work!! You have gotten me thinking about other shop tools than can be adapted for leather work.
 
Very cool Salem, especially that integral! Did you have to do any straightening of the ram horn scales? (I picked up some from Chuck at Alpha and noticed some have warped while on the shelf waiting to be put to use.)

Yup Dogwood, that leather stamped pattern would fit well with those honeycomb handle scales.
 
I'm not much for tooling sheaths. But I saw a demo about a year ago that opened my eyes to alternate sources of "stamps" After casing the leather he would use small pencil sized pieces of bamboo and pound them into the leather. This clearly stamped the bamboo nodes and stalk into the leather. He also used side/spider gears to roll a border into his sheaths. His box of tools looked like a box of junk but it sure worked.
 
Some of my favorite sheaths came from a whole cowhide side that I sprayed with a garden hose, layed face down on my driveway and jumped up and down on. There were imprints of stones and sticks... it gave a great distressed look.
 
Interesting stuff, guys! Rick, I don't know if I'd have the heart to do that, but I do like the surface textures in your sheaths.

Phil, I had to take a LOT out of those scales to make them the right size and shape, but I don't recall if they were perfectly flat when I started.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top