Acrylic and Steel: knife

Showing posts with label knife. Show all posts

Monday, March 21, 2011

Irons in the Fire

My thumb has healed from its stabbing – oh yeah, I didn’t tell you about that. So I was finishing up Rocketpants’ knife…wait I didn’t tell you about that either. Sigh.

OK, so if you remember a few (many) months ago, I had some of the guys over and let them pound on some hot metal? Well, other opportunities haven’t presented themselves, and Rocketpants’ birthday was coming up, so I thought I would finish up the knife he started. It was a nice little thing, made from O1 tool steel I think – always hard to remember which scrap is what. So, I did a little hammering, quenching, tempering, grinding and polishing, and put the handle on, and then some more polishing, and some more polishing, and there were still a couple of little scratches in the mirror finish. So, more polishing, and it was about time for bed, and I was so proud of not stabbing myself during the whole polishing process…that I stabbed myself in the right thumb.

Now, this isn’t all that infrequent of an experience, so I can’t say that it was surprising. In fact, my wife, sitting 3 feet away working on the computer, didn’t even notice that I had stabbed myself. You’d be amazed how quickly you can apply direct pressure to a thumb, so, no big spurts of blood either. Unlike that time with the razor – Note to self - don’t ever show people how to shave with a straight razor after a couple glasses of wine.

Anyway, I got myself patched up. Finished up the polishing (with Kevlar gloves) a few days later, sharpened it some more, made a sheath, and gave it to Rocketpants AFTER winning the Twinkie Cup. So no one would accuse me of bribery.

Mind you, I have never eaten a twinkie (despite a picture that floated around facebook a while back), but won a very large margarita glass full of them. What!!?? You don’t know what the Twinkie Cup is?

Every year for the past 3, Rocketpants has put on a race at the Albuquerque Indoor Karting. This year, the theme was Mario Cart. Now, I don’t do the dressing up (because I am lame), and I am not the world’s greatest driver, but somehow I managed to be consistent enough between the two races to tie for 1^st, and then with my random powerup (again, a la Mario Kart), I edged out the other first place winner.

In other news, I tried forging the bronze chunk that I cast and it crumbled. I hit it when it was too hot, not that I knew it until it was too late. As it cooled, it became clear that it was forgeable at lower temps, but how was I to know. I guess I will have to melt it again later and try lost wax next.

Gratuitous picture of Autumn

That's all for now folks...

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Tales from the Mancave: Blackthorn Blade

Blackthorn Blade

The Blackthorn Blade is finally finished, complete with a show stand (made of ebony and holly), and a belt sheath (basswood liner, dyed 8oz cowhide back and loop, bison leather front). The concept and the blackthorn of the handle were provided by NRJJ.

Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa)is a tree with an interesting history, being used as the traditional Irish shillelagh, walking sticks, and sloe gin from the berries. I was intrigued by the idea, and had a blade that seemed appropriate, in a sgian dubh style, so, with some discussion we decided to go for it.

It’s been quite a process to get this knife to where it is today. I’ve posted a few pictures of the process, but thought it might be nice to put them all in one place.

The blade is hand forged of 1095 high carbon steel in my charcoal forge and quenched and heat treated by me as well.

I worked on the blade first and, keeping with the blackthorn concept, put some vine and thorns file-work on the spine of the blade. This was my first file-work of that type.

Next I added a stacked water buffalo horn and nickel-silver spacer, to blend from the blade to the handle.

NRJJ sent me a number of root and branch pieces of blackthorn to pick the right one for his knife. One of them stood out to me as the obvious choice, so I shaped the end knob on the sander.

The wood itself is pale for the most part, but this particular piece has some interesting coloration in the knob, which stands out pretty well, and contrasts nicely with the dark bark.

Unfortunately the wood was a little thin as soon as you got any distance from the knob. In order to match the spacer, and provide a sufficiently robust handle, I had to split the blackthorn horizontally, which left a big gap between the top and bottom. I put it together anyway, and smoothed out the transition between the spacer and the handle, exposing some of the pale wood.

We decided that a black material would be the best to fill that gap, and to contrast with the wood. It worked pretty well, but is a pretty messy process.

In cleaning off the excess, some more of the dark brown bark came off. So, I had a situation – how to blend the very pale wood, with the dark bark. I cut the bark near the knob so that it wouldn’t peel, and then started applying layer after layer of finish.

After putting it all together, I decided it needed something shiny to break up the black, so I filed a couple of stainless pins, and that worked out pretty well. After a few more layers of finish, it was about done.

I worked the blade to hair popping sharp, and had a finished knife – except for marking the blade, which fortunately I didn’t screw up either.

An idea popped into my head when I was looking at the knife and its contrasts in black and white. I thought – hey! Let’s turn a ball of ebony and holly. That would be fun. So I glued together some ebony and holly, and spun away. The leftovers became the sides of the stand, and the ball holds the blade. A little arty, but I like it.