Autumn is 18 months old!

This week was clearly on fast forward, it seems like I barely even got enough sleep. I never got around to my color feature, so I will post that next week. I used to have Mondays off and since I started working on Mondays again, and opened a new store I can barely keep up with anything.

I guess maybe this whole year has been on fast forward. Autumn is 18 months old today! It seems like just yesterday I was planning Autumns first birthday, and just Sunday was already my second mothers day!

Autumn amazes me and breaks my heart every day. Being a parent is an amazing journey and now I really understand what people mean when they say things like that. She can cry and scream and make huge messes, and all it takes is a hug, a smile, or a kiss to melt my heart.

Autumn is a strange girl. She is not really very affectionate, but she likes attention. As far as I can tell she is also very stubborn. She likes dried cranberries, and shoes.

My mothers day was wonderful, we went to the botanical gardens and Aquarium in Albuquerque, which is where these pictures were taken. Adam made me an awesome cleaver, which I may never use, but I REALLY think is awesome. It is hanging over our oven right now. He also gave me a wonderful book on mixed media folk art with some wonderful stories in it.

I have so much more to write about and not enough time! It seems like between Autumn, my job, roller derby and etsy I am working from the moment I get up until I go to bed!

Duke City Derby is having our first bout at the New Mexico Convention Center on Saturday, and I am sure it will be great but I am already nervous!

Have a Great Weekend!

Xoxo,
Erica

Creepy Cool...

My wife is the coolest! Who else would say…you should make me a creepy knife?! I’m itching to get started. I have just the chunk of steel… and that was 3 months ago.

If you know Erica, you know she likes creepy things. Creepy dolls, creepy paintings, zombies, skulls, etc.. I think that is fantastic, so obviously this was a project that I wanted to do, and to put a little thought into...

So…what is a creepy knife? I guess its one that you can imagine seeing in a horror movie, rusty or bloody or sinister. Is it creepier to have an odd bone saw or a bloody butcher knife, or a rusty machete, or… what about a cleaver?

I’ve seen butcher knives with blood stains enameled on. But that just isn’t going to…cut it.

Something super rusty would be cool, but unusable. Lightly rusted is ok. So nothing stainless.

Mostly I just kinda like the idea of a rusty cleaver.

So I started it…

It all started with the chunk of steel, in this case 1095 high carbon steel, which is what I started forging knives with a few years ago. This particular chunk is the heaviest I've worked with, at 1 5/8ths wide and 3/8ths of an inch thick. That’s a lot of metal to move with a little hammer. Makes me wish I had a power hammer, although I do like hand forging. Sometimes I wish for a hotter forge too, but charcoal is pretty good and it feels like being back in time (except for the Dustdevil blower that I use).

Here's the chunk, with Autumn's hand for scale:

And an intermediate stage:

I thought I had a couple more intermediate stages, but I can't find the pictures anywhere, its a pretty big jump to go from the above stage, to the below stage.

Before Quenching:

After a few forging sessions, and a little grinding, I got the shape about where I wanted, quenched it, and ground an edge to it, leaving the forging and quenching patina on the back edge, while polishing the actual edge.

After Quenching:

I decided to go with oak as the handle, because it looks kinda basic, and was torn between rough twine and leather for the keeper cord that it will hang from. In the creepy theme I probably should have tied it off in a noose, but didn't. Oh yeah, and I used framing nails for the pins. Nice!

Anyway, I think it is pretty awesome, its heavy like a cleaver should be, sharp enough that you could probably shave with it, and creepy enough to meet the desired goal. We both kinda think that it should have a block to store it in, ya know, a head or skull or ribcage or something, but for now its going to hang on the wall.

I know its not rusty, but it did cut me a couple of times - I have all kinds of nicks on my hands - so its a little blood thirsty.

And I finished it on Mothers day :) Happy Mothers Day Honey!

What do you think?