What's going on in your shop? Show us whats going on, and talk a bit about your work!

Yesterday I got the quillons bent to where I want them and then got it heat treated.
Let me say I've never been more nervous about a quench, but I took every precaution I could, and it couldn't have gone better! Not even a little warp!
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And I spent the better part of today sanding the inside of the ricasso and quillons getting them perfect and even, it was a bit of a pain, but I got there in the end, lol.
 
Getting a bit of momentum back. Finished another rwl34 hunter.
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Then ended up with a bit of spare time in-between projects so grabbed a random blank off the scrap pile (Duffed bevels and stock got to thin to fix) and some timber of the rejects pile (big inclusion) and resurrected it into a new bird and trout knife for my gear kit. Actually turned out ok in the end. Might try it on a deer this week for shits and giggles
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It's time to fit-up the handle, but it's been a learning experience for sure! These first two attempts weren't perfect so I'm have to start over again. Third times the charm!
Unfortunately fitting up the pommel is going be even harder, so I'm gonna have to take it very slow and methodical.
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REK Knives said:
Has anyone ever hand rubbed cruwear at 63-64hrc? This is just one side... Regular sandpaper doesn't seem to do much of anything. Used a combination of stones and diamond lapping film, waiting to finish this side after more lapping film arrives. This one side took about 6hrs though.

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6 hours per side... now that's bleeding for your craft. Ouch!
 
yesterday, I moved all my leatherworking stuff out of my workshop! Freed up so much space, so I'll be building a couple work benches and dialing stuff in a lot better than it has been for the past year and a half. It's still a small space, but I have twice the amount of it now and I'm super excited to get it dialed so that when I return from Blade, everything will be more efficiently laid out and basically a brand new shop! Yay!
 
Lorien said:
yesterday, I moved all my leatherworking stuff out of my workshop! Freed up so much space, so I'll be building a couple work benches and dialing stuff in a lot better than it has been for the past year and a half. It's still a small space, but I have twice the amount of it now and I'm super excited to get it dialed so that when I return from Blade, everything will be more efficiently laid out and basically a brand new shop! Yay!
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Where are you putting your leather shop?
 
SwissHeritageCo said:
Where are you putting your leather shop?
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another corner of the garage. I put up a bunch of walls years ago to break the space up into separate areas for different things, so the leatherwork and bike shop occupy the same portion of the garage, probably about 8'x 10'. The machinery/knifemaking area is about 10'x13' now. It's turning into quite the neat little cave
 
still pluggin away on the shop, probably a few more days, (years) before it's more or less done. Put together a new mini bench for a disc sander and a vise, freed up the space the portaband was in where a bench grinder can now fit. Got a 6"x 2" or so bench to build next, likely tomorrow, which is where a bench top mill will eventually live. Cleaning everything-ish, I just been poundin out the hours in there trying to get a bunch of stuff done- it's like a bomb went off. The thing I'm most looking forward to wrt Blade Show, is coming home to a clean(ish), well laid out shop and getting to work on a bunch of knives and sheaths, (dialed in my leather work space, too!)
 
Played with a brand new handle material last week and finished it up this past weekend! It's from Current Composites (they make phenolic, carbon fiber, burl and supply a few of the knifemaking supply houses) and is called AmeraGrip. Similar to Suretouch from Norplex, but with different fiberglass/rubber materials. They just announced the material last Weds and one of the workers who lives 5 minutes from me dropped off a set of scales to use Weds evening, so I decided to make a knife for them to play with at their shop! I was going to use a store bought blank, but decided to do up a full custom blade for them instead!

Got stuck late at work on Thursday, so I started it Friday evening at 715pm and went from a profiled, drilled and 62 HRC AEB-L blank and the orange scales that I glued a toxic green liner onto and got the knife mostly done by 9pm! Just had to do the sheath, sharpen and etch my logo on it on Saturday! AEB-L is so much easier to grind post HT than the S90V I was working with recently!! Took it up to 400 grit full flat grind and then Scotchbrite fine belt finish and it only took 30 minutes to grind/prep the blade for handles!

Start, this is before the toxic green g10 liners were epoxied to the scales Friday evening:
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And this was at 9pm Friday night, after wiping down with acetone to get all of the sanding dust off! Even with no oil on it and bare material freshly sanded, the colors are really nice and not dingy looking! I took it up to 400 on the belt sander and then 600 by hand in this pic:
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After oiling and getting it in better lighting:
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What I like is that you don't get the feeling of the ridge lines between the fiberglass and rubber like I often get in SureTouch. Works easily, too! I took it to a 600 grit finish and the rubber lost some grippiness, so I went back to 320 and it feels awesome!! It has a more layers of fiberglass between the rubber pieces, so the colors stay nice and vibrant and they have something else in the works I am trying to get them to do as well! The orange is so much brighter than the Norplex stuff, even with their 2x2 ply version. Hoping to be able to do a shop tour with them soon to see what other goodies they have! They have been around since the 60's, and try to source as much of their supplies/material in the US as possible, which is nice to see!
 
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