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Hello, within the past few days I got this knife finished up, I wanted a tanto with a wider blade and this is what I came up with. Sort of a tanto saber hybrid. It is 1/2 scale, I have this blade in full size as well, I forged a short sword blade a long time ago and it is very close to this blade, just twice as big. You can see it fits in my hand, though the grip is slim, you could hold onto it well enough if you had to fight a goblin. It was a nice knife to make, no hickups but I did switch out the mokume on the guard, it was copper/brass now its nickle/copper/silver. Blade: just under 8" Handle: 3.5" Blade thickness: 4mm at the base, tip is 1.5-1.75mm Blade Width at the widest point: a little over 3/4" The blade is edge quenched 1075, took five tries to get the whole edge, ill etch it when I get more vinegar. The tsuka and saya are ipe burl, though the handle only has curls, it was all one piece of wood so the grain flows through the whole piece. The guard is mild steel with a mokume band, im always trying new stuff with my guards on japanese style knives, the ends of the band have notches filed in them that fit in two spots on the guard and it is hammered on, its not going to fall out but if you hit it with something or took pliers to it then the mokume band might come out. The habaki and the fittings are copper, the fuchi and kashira are decorated with one engraved line going around each piece. Very simple and I like how it turned out. The mekugi is copper, im pretty sure I made it by sticking the copper in the chuck of my flex shaft and while spinning it I used a file to taper the copper. The handle wrap is cotton ribbon or something like that, id been looking for something I could use to wrap small handles with and found this at walmart. Anyways, heres pictures. The kashira, or the fuchi maybe, the rear fitting was re-sanded and its still taking on a patina and looks a little odd.

Howzit all, Just finished this one up for a customer. Brief was for a general purpose hunting/skinning bush knife for here Zimbabwe. Steel is 5160, handle scales are teak and liners are recycled plastic.

As Brian mentioned, the strut does do a good job of keeping the belts tight, they do "twang" when plucked. Ive had mine for about a year now, and have had no issues. I have a 1.5 horse with a vfd and it has good power. Im sure i will upgrade eventually to a 3 hsp. Im lucky enough to have a remote for my vfd so its inside a sealed plexiglass housing- important!! You can order it with or without a motor, i just was lucky enough to get one from a friend by bartering manual labor. All around tho i would definately buy another one. Tom

All three are glued up. After the glue sets I pull the pin out of the middle and just clamp them. I try not to touch them for 24 hours. Starting to get nervous, hope this all works. Adam

Hello, more knives here, and maybe more to come if I want to keep posting. First up is a 1/4 scale katana with a long handle. It has an 8 3/4" blade and 5 3/4" handle, the guard is copper with some not so great engraving by me; copper habaki, fuchi, and kashira. He wood is padouk and it has a bamboo mekugi. The blade is forged "music wire" which is 1080-1095ish, there are a few forge marks by the habaki. This is supposed to be a mean chopper, the blade is a little thick but the edge is thin and it cuts light targets well. Next here are a couple 1/6 scale knives I just made sheaths for, I had to make a leather splitter to get leather thin enough. Steel is from a toilet snake, it makes a decent blade, these minis get used to deburr metal stuff and they hold up well. They are about an inch and a half long. One has ebony and silver and the other is cocobolo with a steel guard and copper spacers. The pins are sewing pins. And heres my 1/4 scale handplane with my sen yari, one of which is a miniature.

Alright. Ready for the next installment. First thing from my wife this morning, "are you going to work on the bathroom?" I have this love hate relationship (More hate at the moment) with the downstairs bathroom. I am renovating it, currently finishing up the sheet rock, which is not my favorite thing in the world. Next is texture, so my bench looked like this to start out Had to patch up a couple spot in the drywall, so I told her I would spray the texture tomorrow. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow, right? So after a few more chores: had to pick my daughter up from a sleepover, fix my hitch so I can go get a trailer next weekend, take the boys to ski hill for the afternoon, go grocery shopping with the wife - I was finally able to duck into the garage for a bit. Here we go: I have found marking things is very important or I start getting things all mixed up by the end. Number one: I take the pieces to the disk sander and get all the edges flat and happy. I do this by eye, probably not the most accurate method, but it's tolerable in my opinion. I put the mark on the work rest so I know how long the antler portion is going to be, and so I have a reference to try and keep the two ends as parallel as possible. The hardest part is the antler as there are no square edges... After they are all sanded I am going to glue them together, this is were I deviate from my prior attempts. usually I glue everything together as I put them on the tang, but this time I am going to take a few extra steps, bear with me. This is a complete experiment. I started by drilling a 3/8" inch hole in the center of each piece. I don't have a legit drill press vice, so my little mobile bench vice will have to suffice. It goes with out saying you want the drill bits to be sharp here, I didn't seem to have a sharp one, so I started off giving them a sharp edge on the grinder. Making a wood, antler and phenolic paper sandwich. A little G-Flex Want to get every surface very well covered to avoid defects in the transitions later. I keep them all in line with a convenient allen wrench. and clamp them up in the vice. One at a time at this point. The others are prepped and waiting in line. Now it's the waiting game, watching glue dry, so to speak. Gonna post this and then go help make dinner, have family coming over. Have a good weekend! Adam

Finished these today. 3 different sizes of em'. The hooks at the bottom are for hanging towels on. These were all forged from 1/2" square drop from work. They are adjustable for different shelf sizes. The only thing about the adjustability of these is that I still need to make 90° brackets to connect the corner of the wall and shelf. That will add the 3rd contact point and lock everything in place. These can be very minimal in size.

Thanks! Thanks John, I enjoy the WIP post the most, so I figured I would contribute, even if I don't know what I am doing most of the time. "Non-Traditional" - Haha, you mean you haven't seen a herd of reindeer bed down under a Koa tree before?

Any veg oil, heated, is fine. Sunflower is better than most if you can't get canola/rapeseed, though. On thickness: in the US we say the thickness of a dime, but I just looked at my UK coins and none fit the bill. Let's say exactly half as thick as a 20p coin, or about 0.5 mm. We leave it that thick to minimize warping and to have a safety buffer for decarburization. Watch for the shadows! If you can see the steel in the forge you will see what looks like shadows moving inside the steel at aboit the point it goes nonmagnetic. Wait until those disappear (with the blade in the forge and a rising heat), then quench immediately. The shadows are a quantum phenomenon that physically show when the phase change happens.

These were in the possession of reseller of custom knives. A Fogg dagger and a gold mounted kiradashi. Typical Fogg touches, texture, gold, a fine touch. I didn't ask about prices, I heard him say that that dagger was north of $16 K, g

just a few comments.... Most of the sheffield cutlers anvils are mounted onto (or into) large stone blocks, traditionaly using rotted horse manure to tamp them in. I have a few cutlers anvils with the tooling slots. ( or toolmakers anvils)and they range in weight from around 150 to 700 lb. Most of these were designed for large scale manufacturing ...so repetativly making the same product 1000"s of times. I have tooled up one of mine and it works just fine... sure many of you have seen it...ive watched it many times a lot to learn from this guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpeyhC-UIFg

I found it in New Hampshire. It was. LONG ride from Michigan but well worth it. I had an L5 discectomy when I was 17 years old and now I'm 32 and had an L5S1 fusion. I have a good friend that swears by wearing cowboy boots and it helps with his back.

Yeah I ended up with this one. 200 lbs and it was made in germany. I haven't made any dies for it yet but this spring I will probably get around to it after I'm all healed up from my back surgery. I subscribed to you YouTube channel also. I hope to see a video about making dies for that beauty.