WIP: Ondrej "Papi" Berkus slipjoint folder

[Jos]

On another forum I saw a nice wootz/damascus/mammoth slipjoint folder, made by Ondrej Berkus, a young Chech knifemaker.

This is the one:

I fell in love immediately. Love at first sight as they say. The only thing I wasn't really wild about was the colored damascus.

So I went ahead and ordered one. Asked for the damascus NOT to be colored, and he suggested some nice bark ivory.

This is the result:

And I must say I'm very, very pleased with it. I'll post some WIP pictures.

Kind regards,

Jos

 

[Jos]

WIP:

Part I:

Hey everyone,
got a big update today, i've been working almost exclusively on one knife, cause my buddy from the machine shop finally brought me the wootz steel i had him EDM cut in half (too thick to waste the half of it), and surface ground. He woke me up with it at around 6 am, and i've been at it until now, excluding the lunch break and a trip to post office. I figured it's time Jos finally got his knife, right ?

Now, i have cut the blade out of one of the pieces of wootz...LOVE my bandsaw - i had almost no clean up grinding after the cutting

All the parts cut out and in different stages of shaping and all

And shaped together

Milling done - it goes really fast when you're not cutting locks, milling under them...i love slippies, they are really pleasure to make

Bolsters in place and shaped

I thought i would stop at this point, cause i had done enough for the day, but frankly, i didn't have anything better to do So i cut out the scales, milled them to a correct thickness.....

...installed them on the knife....

...and contoured the handle, finishing at 240 grit all around...

At this point, i'm beat But i will pick it up tomorrow, i want to grind and HT the blade and finish the handle... we'll see about that

Thanks for looking, Ondrej

 

[Jos]

Part II:

Another update, i have been at this one all day again, and after today, all i have left to do is finish the blade, and put the whole knife back together

Here are the parts that need to be 'dealt' with

Liners fileworked, everything etched and polished...

Now just the blade and the screws

And the blade just before heat treating, the whole handle is finished now

Finished pics tomorrow
Thanks for looking, Ondrej

 

[Jos]

Finished pics:

Hey everyone,
i finished this baby yesterday, it has wootz blade, twist damascus bolsters, and mammoth ivory scales. The liners are fileworked and anodized titanium, screws are heat colored gold, and the pivot screws have mammoth ivory inlays in them.

Let me know what you think, take care,
Ondrej

Kind regards,

Jos

 

[SteelSnob]

That's a very nice knife!

 

[Boggs]

Jos....

An excellent addition....

 

[Peregrin]

I like everything about that knife. Nice WIP thread too. Congrats on a fine piece.

 

[JAlexander]

Wow. That's quite a score, Jos. What are the dimensions?

James

 

[Billy Helton]

That was A good wip thanks for posting. Nice knife by the way.

 

[Jos]

What are the dimensions?

Bladelength 6cm (that's 2.36")

I like it so much that I ordered 2 more. One with wootz blade, meteorite bolsters and green/blue mammoth ivory scales, and slightly bigger. (7.5cm bladelength) The second one will have a wootz blade, stainless damasteel bolsters, ironwood scales, als 7.5cm bladelength. That will be my new fancy "UK-legal EDC".

Kind regards,

Jos