okie dokie. The clamps got taken off today. Pins got trued to the handles and handles got trued up to the tangs. Tomorrow if handle shaping and sanding. Wednesday should be polishing up, sharpening, and picture day. Thursday will be sheath day.
Even if one of those knives wasn't mine this would be so cool to watch. ... It does make it sweeter though!
I'm in love...lol j/k, but seriously will you marry me and make me a house of knives....lol ;P Dude this has got to be one of the best threads that i've kept up with. Always anxious for the next picture to pop up. I feel like a proud papa waiting to see his new born baby for the first time.
Thanks for going through all of the trouble of putting process pics up. It's great seeing as the knives go through all of the steps of fabrication. They all look great and I look forward to seeing them finished...maybe one in particular...We all lucked out finding a very talented knife maker
Alright guys. Here's where we left off. Today was handle day. First I did the rough shaping on the KMG and here's where I started hand filing all of them. Here's some comparison for you. This is what they look like after rough shaping with the KMG. And this is what they look like after being shaped with the hand files. Alright. I didn't take pictures of the sanding part so we're jumping to after sanding was finished Here they are all together and here are a few goodies that are standing out.
Green canvas micarta over orange G10 and black paper micarta liners This one is for a customer. Black and grey G10 over black canvas micarta and blue vulcanized liners This one is for Blade Show. Bloodwine and black DymondWood® I've never worked with Dymondwood and this is a block I got from the Winter GA Custom Knifemakers Guild meeting. I thought is was a little fragile at first, but I think as long as there are no sharp edges this stuff will be plenty tough. This one is for Blade Show too. Ivory paper micarta over natural canvas micarta This is Andy's.
I may need to go ahead and throw dibs on that black and grey g10 for blade, so i can get it when i get there. That is a bush operator xl correct?
Nope. It's a Tango. aaaand I'm actually not letting anyone call dibs on Blade Show knives yet. Sorry brudda. What I'm going to do is set aside a few knives from every batch before Blade so that when it comes around, those combined with the big batch I'm going to do right before are going to make for a big beautiful table. :thumbup:
I completely understand broski.....can't let me buy up all your awesome stuff. Gives me even more reason to be there. I'm pumped that about all they great makers that are gonna be there and hopefully some drinking time with the steel breathing maestro.....lol
If I had my pad in front of me I could tell ya. They are actually in an order. That's a fun little tidbit that you guys might be interested in. The same knife is destined for one person from start to finish. When I scribe the steel bars, I also write each customer's name on the blade that will be theirs. From that point on, they stay in order. Even the handle scales and pins have their name written on them. At no point, do the parts get switched to a different knife or person. The only time that changes is if the knife gets messed up in some way and has to be scrapped all together, or if the person decides they don't want to purcahse right then and it goes up for sale. They even go into the heat treat oven in a certain order so that I can keep up with which one is who's. You'll notice that these blades all have a strange blue spot in the middle that are all the same color. That's because I used photochop to block out the names so no one knows who all is getting knives. Every single one that is destined for someone has their name on it. The only one in this picture that doesn't have a name on it, the bottom BOXL, is mine. I later wrote "personal" on the blade. In this picture, you can see them "post heat treat" and prepped for glue up. You can clearly see the names on every blade. Plus, if I change spots in the trays, I mark it down on my pad so I still know which is who's.
No worries, Dylan. That's cool though. Love watching the process. Thanks again for doing this. :thumbup: