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After a few days break it was back into the shed for some hand sanding. A 5 piece and a 3 piece chef set along with a Tahr Hunter

I've ben trying to find a copy of Gene Chapman's Antler and Iron books to give to my dad, with no luck, so I decided to just make him one of the knives and he can reverse engineer it... this is what I came up with. Antler handle, cs70 spring and blade, clay hardened with a coffee etch, mild steel saddle with brass pins. The tail piece is bog oak, and the pivot pin is made from a 4" nail... Let me know what you think...

What Joshua said. If we don't push the boundaries, how will we know where they are?

That is the trick, isn't it? If your process hasn't changed, but you notice your blades aren't performing the way they used to, the oil is a major variable to check IF you're using canola. Over time it does break down from the heat, and gets slower. It usually goes rancid before it slows too much, so when it starts stinking instead of smelling like fry oil, it's time to change it. Or if a mouse drowns in it. Believe me, you'll know the first time you quench in it that something is horribly wrong. The smell is indescribably noxious. If you're like most home shop makers, you'll be quenching no more than five or ten blades a week maximum, often one after another in one day, then letting the oil sit for a weeks or months until you have another batch ready to harden. If it goes rancid, you'll smell it with the first quench. If you're using a commercial oil like Joshua's Parks 50, as he said, you lose more to drag-out than to getting too used. Commercial oils (and straight mineral oil) last for years in the average home shop environment. Only if you're quenching so many blades per day that you need an oil cooler and circulating pump to keep it in the spec temperature range do you need to worry about it breaking down. And I don't know any makers, even full-time professionals, who need that. Industry, yes. One-man shops, not so much. Finally, one of the many reasons not to use motor oil as quench oil: over time it absorbs water from the air, which results in increasingly fast and uneven quenches. It's designed to do that, and in your engine that's a good thing. In your quench tank it isn't.