Finishing touches

Given that I feel like I never have enough time to work on my knives, it appears that I have actually gotten quite a bit done. I also received some knife related gifts this holiday season, including some wood for handles, and a magazine about Japanese chef's knives. I didn't learn a whole lot about the Japanese knives, but it was an interesting article anyway.

Anyway, this post is about the visual change from relatively raw blades, to finished products. On the next forging session maybe I'll take the idea a little farther, from raw metal to finished product.

But I digress...

At the end of November I posted this picture:

Since then I have finished 4 of these, as well as forging an additional custom knife, and two custom letter openers.

Many of my knives change shape quite a bit during the creative process – for a dramatic example, look back at the November 30^th post on Kitchen knives.

Of the knives above, starting at the left: The big Kukri styled chopper is still languishing unfinished on a shelf; the heat stained santuku styled knife (third from left) was finished as seen below, and sold!

The hunter (second from the left) changed shape and became hidden tang, and is at the far right in the picture below; the big and small daggers are waiting for me to acquire a little patience and are unfinished; the scalpel (top) is finished and in the middle of the picture below.

The knife on the left in the picture below is the custom kitchen chopper that I made for a friends mother.

And finally the knife all the way on the right changed shape a little, was finished and given to my dad for Christmas.

I know some of these pics aren’t new, but it seems relevant to have them all in the same place for this post.

That’s all for now folks. I’ll probably be posting the official specs and maybe some better pictures of individual knives over at hangedmandesigns.