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

These past two weeks I've been up in Maine at the New England School of Metalwork taking the ABS Intro to Bladesmithing course taught by mastersmith Tim Potier. Here are the knives I forged during the class
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It should be noted that the bent blade is not my actual journeyman smith performance test knife. It was just a practice knife to use in a mock test.
 
Santa came early this year.
I wasn't even looking for this book but came across somebody clearing up their (grand)fathers book collection on the German Ebay. ( < $15.-!!!!)
Can you imagine the smile on my face when I unwrap this as a gift from underneath the Christmas tree :)

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More progress in the forge. I am just about done in the grinding area. I am installing the metal dust deputy and one for wood dust. I will build a spark shield around the TW-90 and install the spark trap to the dust deputy. I organized and labeled the belts. I brought in a cool lamp I made a while back. You can see t on the counter by the belts. I am trying to post a video of it. Not sure where it will go yet. Biggest thing was outside. I brought in all the stuff I had stored along the fence during construction and demolished the old tractor shed. The electric lawn tractor and push mower will store in the forge now. It was nice to see the side yard all cleaned up. A few changes coming out there shortly.
The hazy shot of the pan leaning on the wall is Bill Moran's tempering pan. It is a thick steel pan like a griddle with slightly raised sides. He would put springs and other things in it, pour 1/8" of kerosene on them, and set it on the forge. When it caught fire he would pull it off and set it on the anvil to burn off. He said it made a perfect spring temper.20251116_141854.jpg20251116_141845.jpg20251115_161706.jpg20251114_112140.jpg20251106_142826.jpg
 
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I am making progress on the grinder. The main body is pretty much done. It tilts well enough, the tool arms slide in and out, locking levers lock. Let me tell you, milling the long tool arms was a pain, they are longer than the range of movement of my table and repositioning the work while referencing the already milled areas did not work out as well as I had hoped. But it's done now. I may actually have to order the motor now.

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So I exhibited at my first show this weekend!! NCCA in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, so since Wednesday night, I've been scrambling getting ready and knives finished up! Thursday, I had to make a 3hr round trip drive to pick up 8 knives from a gun store for the show, pick up more leather and a better awl at Tandy and some dye on the way home from that trip, so I lost most of Thursday and spent the rest of Thursday working on knives and sheaths. I also dropped the bottle of leather gel dye under my car and forgot about it until I went to pick up dinner, ran over the bottle, which exploded all over my wife's White Honda Pilot! Had to get the hose out and hose the cars down, so my driveway was Briar Brown for a couple of days!

Friday was an all knife day and sheaths in the evenings and Saturday was hours cutting out the little knife stands, getting the new blades lasered, the sheaths their finishes done, tung oiling handles, sharpening blades, etc!!

I made over 2 dozen of these little knife stands in Cherry, Leopard Wood and Walnut and had some Wenge and Walnut ones from before, too:
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And spent a couple hours lasering aluminum bottle openers for key chains for SWAG to give out to people!

This was my 6' table set up:
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As you can see, it was jam packed with 28 knives and 18 strops! The little stands got a lot of good feedback; people liked how easily they could see and pick up/put down the knives. I want to make some step displays, too, so I can get the knives elevated up higher for more visual eye candy! The one knife I sold was the little Mini FBBO with the snakeskin micarta, 3rd from the left on the front row just by my little payment info card. Lots of people picked up that one, so I moved some of the smaller ones to the front for more attention! I have 2 pieces of 8x12 14C28N, so I may do a run of Mini FBBO and FBBO in that steel for the next show in Mystic, CT this coming March!
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My lasers weren't working very well and I realized after spending hours and not getting good results that my honeycomb wasn't level; it slanted towards the back and the boards were front to back, so I wasn't getting a good cut as I got farther up the board because it was out of focus! Changed the boards to side by side and cut much better! Cherry was 100% power, 200mm/min with my 20W diode and leopardwood was 2 passes at the same settings to get a nice, clean cut!

4" drop point in Magnacut and Cow Killer Micarta from Pops with a pre dyed leather sheath, red stitching. I literally did the final logo on Saturday evening after finishing the sheath Saturday afternoon for this and the next 2 blades. I had to get pics in the failing light before the Tung oil was put on them and before logos and stuff were done just to get some OK pictures, so I will get better pics later!
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3.75" 144 layer random 125CR1/15N20 damascus, Stabilized Black Curly Walnut handles, Black and White G10 guard/frame/liners/spacer and a water buffalo leather sheath with orange threads:

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3.5" Clip point in the same damascus as above with Black Micarta Guard, Frame, Pin and lanyard tube and white G10 spacers/liners and vintage oatmeal linen micarta handles. This was my first split toe sheath, definitely prefer the simple pouch method, so I may make another sheath for this one. I should have done the curve back in after the guard about an inch or so higher up the sheath, too. The predyed veg tanned craftsman shoulders have some marks and stuff on them, so it gives a nice, worn/aged look to it, which I like! Plus I don't need to dye or texture it.
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Hengelo_77 said:
Santa came early this year.
I wasn't even looking for this book but came across somebody clearing up their (grand)fathers book collection on the German Ebay. ( < $15.-!!!!)
Can you imagine the smile on my face when I unwrap this as a gift from underneath the Christmas tree :)

20251117-111159.jpg
Click to expand...
Fifteen bucks ?
I paid hundreds.
 
Taz said:
So I exhibited at my first show this weekend!! NCCA in Sturbridge, Massachusetts

I made over 2 dozen of these little knife stands in Cherry, Leopard Wood and Walnut and had some Wenge and Walnut ones from before, too:


And spent a couple hours lasing aluminum bottle openers for key chains for SWAG to give out to people!



View attachment 3028140


As you can see, it was jam packed with 28 knives and 18 strops! The little stands got a lot of good feedback; people liked how easily they could see and pick up/put down the knives.
Click to expand...
It looks like the contact info payment boards were lazered too.
Do you find that helps ?
People don't have to ask what payment types you take and how to spell it ?
 
Yeah, I lasered the contact info on some cherry wood pieces left over from the stands. The 2 sales I had were cash, but it's nice to have on hand! I want to try doing the QR codes for Venmo and Cash app for my next show too.

Having the knife spec cards printed out was nice because people could look at it and see the steel, materials, price and all the information they want to know about the knife quickly, too. I want to organize the table better to have similar steels grouped together, they were pretty scattered around the table this time.
 
Taz said:
Yeah, I lasered the contact info on some cherry wood pieces left over from the stands. The 2 sales I had were cash, but it's nice to have on hand! I want to try doing the QR codes for Venmo and Cash app for my next show too.

Having the knife spec cards printed out was nice because people could look at it and see the steel, materials, price and all the information they want to know about the knife quickly, too. I want to organize the table better to have similar steels grouped together, they were pretty scattered around the table this time.
Click to expand...

Is the resolution on the wood going to be fuzzy ?

I think some metal coupons would be interesting like that too unless reflection would be a problem.
Matte blasted stainless or copper or something.
 
I was wondering the same, so I wanted to try it on scrap wood first and see if it will scan or not on my phone. If not, I will do some metal engraving with my IR 2 watt laser. I have some brass and other stuff I can use.
 
12345678910 said:
Is the resolution on the wood going to be fuzzy ?

I think some metal coupons would be interesting like that too unless reflection would be a problem.
Matte blasted stainless or copper or something.
Click to expand...
I've lasered QR codes on wood many times with my laser and it works just fine for scanning!
 
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