Who Would Be Interested In Doing A Collaboration Classic Hunter With Me??

Sean nice stuff
I agree, the more stars the better.
I can work with any size you come up with but the more I
have to work with the better, becauce keeping in mind
extra length if we keep the stars /pattern
lined up with each other on all bolsters.
with the dovetails and angle I'll get some waste
I'm not sure what the width of the blade tang is going to be
in the bolster arias? but w x 1"+ But

The Jade is the deciding factor for length Roger
you know the length your ending up with,,
minus that from the handle length
( measured from the short ends of the angles to
keep the pattern in line)
leaving bolster length
divided by 2
plus angle and dove-tail waste
dove-tail angle at 20 deg's..and
any loss from centering star/pattern, (for one side)
this means,, if the stars are 1/4' apart I may need an extra
1/4" to keep them the same on both sides if
you all want to get that close centering star/pattern

if this don't mess someone up nothing will..
in other words as long as possible with out over kill for Sean.
ok wack me now :eek: :)
 
Roger-

You can see even more of the pattern in person, hopfully I will get some better pictures tonight. Right now the bars are 0.45 square, so if I go with option #2 the bar would be about 0.90 wide and 5 inches long.

Dave-

Iowa isn't that far! Only about 8 hours to Des Moines ;). There are a couple web pages out there that give a decent description of the process. But I would highly recommend the Book by Steve Midgett. It is a beautiful book and available on his website. Some of the stuff in that book is just incredible, makes me think about trying to make some jewelry. Heck he is getting $1400 and up for wedding bands. Anyways here is his site:

Mokume


Dan-

If I do option two, there will be two bars that will be about 0.90 wide by 5 inches long (plus, since I am .1375 over thickness, I might be able to tap them with the power hammer and widen them a bit). The gaurd looks to be about 1.5 long, so one bar would give you 2 extra inches to play with. The rear bolster would have even more wiggle room. I can match the bars together the best that I can with what I have to try to keep the stars alinged.


Sounds like option #2 is the way to go. Right? If yes, I will try to get them fused tonight and shipped out wednesday or thursday.

If you all could just chime in real quick and confirm option #2, that would make me feel better. I don't want to screw them up now.;)
 
Yup #2

I'm not sure if the width was ever mentioned ??
Roger?? will .900 be enough?

I'd hate to see that Pattern messed up
with a power Hammer.:eek: (and I'm not sure if it would be)

One thing to see about will the jade be profiled to the blade or
the blade to the Jade? remembering we're relieving the width
of the handle materiel just a little to round the spine just a tad

for reasons of weir and any shrinkage mentioned before.
if I can grind the Jade , that won't be a problem here.
someone said we can grind it with a belt
grinder with a certain belt right?

where are we at on Jade and Damascus so far ? :confused:
 
Yeah, that was me that said you can grind the jade with a belt. I used that same jade that I sent to John for that cable fighter I made. I used silicon carbide belts.

The pieces I used started off at about .75 x 1 x1 and .75 x 1 x 3+ and I ground them to the shape that was posted on page 8 of this thread. It is slow going and I probably went through eight 40 grit belts and about 5 each of 120 and 240 and 320, then sanded by hand.

With the liners being pretty thin, i don't think you will have much problem.


John- If the jade hasn't been cut yet, feel free to go ahead and get some extra cut for practice pieces. That way Dan will be able to get the feel for it before he grinds the ones for the knife.
 
The front bolsters are 3/4 inch long (front to back) and 1 1/2 inch wide (spine to tip of finger guard). Dan should have a set of front blanks 7/8 inch X 1 5/8 inch. The rear bolsters are not as long but to be safe Dan should have two sets of the same size: 7/8 X 1 5/8.

John is sending me some diamond polish for the jade and a diamond cutting wheel just in case I need it for cutting off bulky over sizes. Other than that I intend to grind with belts on the 2 X 72 and the horizontal edge grinder.

Anyone heard anything about Nick's twist steel??

RL
 
Guys-

I've been having computer troubles, I can't find the dimensions that the billet needs to be...can somebody please tell me?

I wanted to have it done already, but things have been too busy around here.

Nick
 
Michael, please email Nick the dimensions you need to grind out the blank. Thanks.

Nick, Michael should end up with a 5/32 inch thick blank to send to Dave for grinding the tang taper and bevels.

RL
 
Nick, I'm showing almost 9 1/2 inches by 1 1/2 inches. Michael should have stock 9 5/8 inches by 1 5/8 inches. Dave will need 5/32 flat thickness for his part.

I had the darn print out here the whole time. I don't know why I couldn't have posted this the first time.

Thanks Nick. We need steel as soon as you can get it to Michael.

RL
 
Nick, sorry about your computer trouble, there's very little in the modern world that can upset it more than losing your main mode of communication. I hate that.

Seems most people who lose their machine are running Windows. Several years ago I determined that for ethical reasons I wanted to find an alternative to M$. Not just to avoid supporting a bunch of crooks, but because virii are mostly written for M$ OSes for the greatest impact. And I hated losing my stuff.

Tried various flavors of Linux, but it's just too arcane for me - my computer is a tool, not an end in itself. I didn't want to spend my time learning how to manage my machine, I wanted a mature computer I could just use.

That pretty much left me with Mac, whose drawback is it's more expensive. But my credit card company must have been reading my mind because I got an offer for a low fixed rate for a short period and used it.

Man I love this Mac! I bought it about three years ago, it's running OS X which is a flavor of free unix similar to Linux. Consequently, it's incredibly stable. It has never crashed or locked up or performed any of those terrible frightening life changing bad things all my Windows implementations had.

Plus it's cool looking, and by now it's paid off (that balance long since having been replaced with tools and stuff - the American way).

But recently I read a great white paper about OSes by Neal Stephenson the SF author extoling the virtues of Linux and Be OS, and dissing M$ and Apple. Maybe Apple more. :D It was really interesting and entertaining to read, and put development of computer OSes in a cultural context. I'll get the link to it today to edit into this dumb reply later in case anyone else is looking for nerd reading.

Anyway, this was a long way of suggesting that everyone ditch their cheap unreliable M$ machines and either get a cheaper Linux implementation (which you could put on your current computer for about $50 and never suffer from crashes or virii) or go buy a cool Mac and have a slick new tool to love.

Dave
 
Roger -- that is correct -- that will work perfectly. Sorry about my absence, but I've been sick the past two days. Looks like everything is running full steam.

Is anyone taking pics of their work? It would be nice to see some of the progress in pictures to be documented on this thread. I think it would keep us excited, and give some of the "lurkers" something to look at too. :D
 
Originally posted by rlinger
The front bolsters are 3/4 inch long (front to back) and 1 1/2 inch wide (spine to tip of finger guard). Dan should have a set of front blanks 7/8 inch X 1 5/8 inch. The rear bolsters are not as long but to be safe Dan should have two sets of the same size: 7/8 X 1 5/8.
RL
Click to expand...

looks good at 7/8" to work with .
At .900 wide the Mokume pattern will be vertical ,,,
the stars are diagonal
so it should look OK what do you guys think?
I got the Mokume picture up
and I put the link below if that will help?
please tell me if I have the order of jobs right
with the names on the page.:)
 
Hey all, I have run into another minor snag with the mokume. I am actually glad I found this out instead of going ahead and fusing the bars together.

I was wondering how well the twisted bars would fuse since instead of having copper against nickel silver like in the initial billet, there will be copper against copper and N/S against N/S when the two twisted bars are next to each other. I did a practice piece with some of the junk bars I made before. The fusion was OK but I was able to pry the the two bars apart by sticking one in the vice and using a 12 inch cresent wrench on the other. Here is a pic:

colab4.jpg


This will hold together great for bolsters since there was acutually tearing of the copper when the bars were pried apart. My only concern is with the little areas that do not fuse together will probably look like little cold shuts in the finshed billet. They may not even be noticable, but they will be there.

The second trial was with soldering two bars together. Here is a picture:

colab3.jpg


Now, obviously you can see the bright solder line in betwen the bars, and the destruct test was terible. The solder joint just let go and I have two seperate bars again. Probably not the way to go, but I only used low temp plumbing solder.

I read up on this and the best way to fuse the same metals together is to hold them at eutectoid temp for 10 hours with no oxygen exposure or to actually electroplate one with copper and the other with silver and then fuse them together in the forge. Both of these are not really an option for me unless I buy some more equipment (hey, that sounds like a good idea ;) )

I am going to go with the normal fusion method. Even if there are un-fused areas I think it will still look better than the soldered joint and be stronger even though there are flaws. Damn I hate knowing there are imperfections in there!:mad:

I just wanted to let you all know what was going on. My only other thought was to take them to a welder and have them brazed. Do you think that is a good solution? I think somebody should be able to solder/braze these with a high strength copper colored solder.

Let me know, I will take the bars to work with me tomorrow incase you all think the brazing is the way to go. If yes, I will find somebody to do it.
 
I'd say normal fusion method

a high temp colored Solder would even show in places..
and reg brazing may over heat the copper :confused:
just an opinion
 
Sean, I'm going to have to ask Bruce to put a extra heavy plating of gold on your name. Take a little break for a day or two to let things figure their way out. We're still waiting on steel and Michael and Dave need to grind it before it goes to me. I'll have it for 3 days if all I do is HT before shipping it out. If I do all my work at once I'll have it a couple/three days longer. Relax and figure it out. We can't have noticable seams. Can I help you with getting more stock to work with, if you think you need it?? If so please email me. I don't have the stock but I can compensate the costs.

RL
 
Hey boys-

Well, I had the forge going today, and so far I have a big-fat 108 layer twist billet.

I'm a little unclear if you all wanted a simple twist, or if you want a multi-bar twist?

I see Sean is going for a multi-bar twist on the mokume.

Heck, I'd go for a Turkish twist, but I've never done one before and I'd probably screw it up.

Nick
 
Nick, just twist it :D !!! What you think best is the way we should go. GOD BLESS. The steel has been struck with a hammer.

Sean, let me know about the stock situation.

RL
 
BIG IVORY UPDATE: Chuck Leake is donating some black and blue bark ivory that is supposed to dwarf what I was donating. Really Premo stuff, even more than was posted here some weeks back. I should have it next week. It was his suggestion and I gladly accepted. That black and blue might marry well with the green/black jade.

Dan K., reserve a good spot on your certificate for Chuck Leake.

Chuck is a volume dealer in ivory and for him to offer us top premium scales, on his own without being asked, deserves a measure of appreciation. Lord, please, be with me as I grind on it.

RL
 
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