Been a while since I've posted, but I've been keeping busy.
As time goes on I've become more fascinated by the world of Japanese blades, but being American as I am, I love the rough and tough wild west themes too. Fusion style knives, like some of those by Ben Tendick and Dave Friesen, are among my favorite knives. So naturally I had to do my take on it.
Keep in mind by the way, I've been a bit slow on the uptake in regard to hamons (and good golly I need to get some patternwelding skills).
Anyway, a fun one I tried out. Western Bowie with Japanese themes.
The blade is W2, clay quenched. I forged this one pretty close to shape, and kept the forge texture but for the most part removed the scale. The clip was hollow ground (that was a nightmare to freehand). The seppa and fuchi are copper, and I forged the tsuba from a farrier's rasp, ground only the edges smooth, then let it soak in the forge to build up scale, air cool, and wax while still warm. The handle is plain maple, but I collected the sawdust from shaping it and used that for a lacquering, texturing, and dyeing technique. Maybe it would've looked better with some dark hardwood, maybe not, but it was an idea I wanted to try out.
The tsukamaki is dyed leather. I did a simple double knot on both sides, spotted with glue. Rough of course but that's the goal. I did the wax-the-tang-and-bet-with-expoxy to get a tight takedown fit, and it's pretty firm.
For the sheath I made a quick stamp out of antler for a sort of pebbling look and went to town on it. My leather skills still have some catching up to do but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
All in all, this is one of those fun projects to interrupt the billion dashis, and I really enjoyed it.