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I started this piece around the first of the year. I got the welding done and the blade sat around until I had time to finish it out now that blade show is on the horizon, as well as the Mystic Knife show this weekend, it seemed like the time. The blade is forged of 15n20/ 1075 and 1095 steels. the bolster is sterling silver, ( Lost wax cast) the handle is stabilized yew root. I have one other blade from this billet forged rough ground and heat treated I am going to try and get that one finished for blade show as well. I have been calling this one A New Dawn.

I have found a new challenge for both my non existent photographing skill and my poor phone. Shiny surfaces in layers apparently are too much for both as I just can't capture the transparency and colours of the rams horn to do it any justice. I would like to blame Joshua States for this one as I've been looking st his frame handle thread for a long time and finally just had to try it out The idea was to make a modestly sized bowie with a bit of flair, something that would suit a riverboat poker player of dubious standing The blade is W2 steel, 17,5cm long, hollow ground with a 6mm thick back rib and the knife has an overall length of 29,5cm Bolster is several pieces of brass, each fitted tightly to the tang and staked in place The grip has a two piece brass frame the got a bit of filework inside and out as the rams horn scales ended up being slightly more translucent than I anticipated. scales are attached with peened brass pins I might need to get someone with better skills to photograph it once I've cleaned it up properly, made a sheath for it and decided wether or not I should bother with bringing out the hamon in the blade

I haven't put anything here in a while, so here you go. Three-finger integral skinner. I forged the blade out of 1/2" / 13mm O1 two years ago as a proof of concept thing, and never finished it out. Last year I heat treated and polished it, and forgot it again. It almost got black paper micarta scales, then ebony, then bone, and so on. Couldn't ever figure out what I wanted on it. Then I got some stabilized red oak burl from fellow forumite Bill Armstrong a month or two ago and it finally clicked. Forged integral O-1, tapered tang, stabilized red oak burl, nickel silver pins. OAL 6" / 152mm. Maybe it'll get a sheath one of these days...

Just finished the sheath for this one. 1095, bog oak, red deer antler and copper, let me know what you think...

Hi everyone, Another little status update. Currently 234 hours into the project, and I've just etched the blade. there is still some work left to be done on side A and B in regards to sculpting and texturing, but I'm getting pretty close. there is also a bit of stonesetting left. All details are in 24kt gold and copper. I will be adding a yellow 0,03ct natural diamond on each side close to the tip (that little black dot on the blade after the writing), and there will be one white diamond on each side of the tang (where the ricasso meets the little notch near the edge). Slowly but surely getting there.... Bit of a closer-up on side A to see alloy patterns: The blade is in a san-mai lamination. The outer layer on both sides is pure meteorite iron. A real pain to forge, but beautiful to look at. Have a nice week everyone!

Finally finished that 18th century-style folder with the checkered bone scales. The pin isn't disappearing as much as I'd like it to, but the action is nice. I also domed the spring pins, a first for me. I usually leave them flush. This time I didn't want to mess up the checkering. AEB-L blade and spring, nickel silver liners, bolsters, and pins. Bone scales cut from a cow femur section sold as a chew toy for dogs. Next time I'm just going to buy bone slabs, it's not worth the extra work to prepare the raw bone. Just for fun, here it is next to the first one of this style I made a few years ago. The older one used the same bone, but left thicker. And that nickel silver butt-end bolster adds a full ounce to the weight! The long clip blade is not a shape one sees on 18th century folders either, it just seemed to fit better at the time. Both are 4" / 105mm closed, 7 3/8" / 190mm open. The new one weighs 3.4 ounces / 96.5g, the one with the rear bolster weighs 4.4 ounces / 124.7 g. Down in the "what did you do in your shop today" thread in The Way there's a few WIP shots of the checkering process. Thanks for looking!

Just got this finished 52100 / 420SS San Mai with stainless fittings and a Walrus handle. a

Being inspired by the wonderful @Emiliano CarrilloI decided to embark on my own adventure into making a pattern welded spear. My basic components for this piece were some off cuts from a twist bar I had forged, 1095, and wrought iron. Spearhead components against concept art Here is the blade components welded together and next since I wanted to have the pattern flowing with the edges I fish mouthed it Here it is fish mouthed And post welding. This I found to be the most nerve wracking part as without precision my pattern would be off After doing my initial grinding the patterning of the wrought iron is showing itself Post rough grind I got the socket of the spear welded onto the blade itself Here it is pre etching And finally completed! Closeup photos because I still have yet to find out how to best capture patterning Overall I am very happy with the piece though I did have some hiccups along the way such as grinding off the edge bar on accident, and it being slightly shorter than I had wanted. But all I can fix on my next one! I hope you all enjoy this piece!

Started this last year sometime. Just got it finished up today. 10 1/2" double edged 1095 blade. Carved bog oak handle with boxwood accents. Steel mounts with silver trim. Laminated millboard sheath covered with pigskin with silver throat and chape. Let me know what you think...

Ok, so perhaps this isn't as sharp as people here are used to, but I'll give it a shot anyway.. I've recently (this week actually) decided to start a little side-hustle in connection with my knife-making - seeing as I need to practice my engraving skills, and would like to get paid doing so. So I've decided to dedicate 1 week a month to making one piece of jewelry, while utilizing the remaining 3 weeks for my knife project. So - I present to you all the first week's result - the "Compass": Stats: Width: 29,2 mm Length: 63,7 mm Thickness: 4,8 mm Vekt: 27 gram It ended up a bit thicker than I had initially wanted, but... I'll make the next one around 3 - 3,5mm thick I think. The piece is made out of a forged piece of railroad steel, engraved in a deep relief with some ornamentation many might be familiar with.. In the middle of the ornamentation I put a 2mm blue sapphire. I also put in some 24kt gold in the corners, and engraved the traditional wheat-pattern sprouting out from the top and bottom of the piece. The bail is made from a piece of 925 Sterling Silver. The bevels around the edges are mirror polished. Total work time: 24 hours from first hit with the hammer, to the last polishing touch... Tomorrow I'm putting this up for sale at the equivalent of 615 USD here in Norway. I have to say, I haven't felt this nervous in quite some time. Fingers crossed! Enjoy what is left of the weekend folks, tomorrow it's back to work!

The tittle pretty much said it. Been a while since I did my signature mustard patina, I believe it makes a nice contrast with the synthetic ivory handle. Bolster is copper and wrought.

Latest build Takedown dagger, mosaic damascus

First one is finished :-). In my opinion the chevron pattern is a mosaic. It is possible to forge it using only basic tools. Now when I know how to forge it i am going to forge another one using bloomery iron.

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...

Cuttoe sword by Iron John Logan Syzygy is made in the late 18th century "Neo Classical" architecture popular with the Enlightenment showing influence of both Greek and Roman within the European Baroque style. The hand carved bronze hilt has extensive sculpting and engraved details of scrolls and bursting rays on top a field of natural forms. The crenelated bronze ferrel supports the natural ringed horn of the worldly Impala along with ebony and a grotesque of the sun and moon sharing a smile as the pommel. The saw back blade has a deep narrow fuller and is etched with Triumph of Arms, the moon on one face, and the sun on the other and is deeply touchmarked by the artist. Edge and saw sharp and functional 24 inches overall, 18-1/2 inch blade 18oz https://www.irontreeforge.com/post/syzygy-cuttoe-sword

Forged from 52100 / 15N20 stretched crushed W's. Maple handles one is stabilized spalted and the other is a stabilized maple burl with some fantastic natural color.

Stara Pravda: "Old Laws". These were the first printed words in Slovene, and a defacto moto during the Slovene Peasent Revolt of 1515. This messer is based on one in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as recorded by Peter Johnsson who generously allowed me to work from his notes. The bi-knife and scabbard are imagined in a contemprary style with leather tooling referencing period armour engraving. Both finished with mosaic pins in red stag scales. Studio photo by @sharpbycoop Available here if you are so interested.

After some discussion with Nick Anger about a collaboration, I gave him a drawing derived from the shape of an Amaryllis leaf, which I had been thinking about for a while as a blade shape. A few days later he had forged a rough version of the leaf shape. This initial maquette was extremely useful and allowed us to discuss steel pattern and shaping choices for the final blade. Although I had not settled on a theme for my work on the knife, I knew I wanted to incorporate an iron field into the pattern-welded steel that could be engraved apart from the hardened steel. Nick and I discussed making a wood-grain (mokume) patterned blade and strategically forge-welding iron within the pattern, in an area balanced with the overall leaf-shape. He proceeded to make the overall shape in a beautiful wood-grain pattern using 15n20, 1080 and 1084. I think Nick’s blade exhibits mastery in several ways but particularly in the balance of form harmonizing with the patterned steel and iron. Also, technically, it was quite difficult, first to meld the materials, and then, through the sequence of shaping, heat-treating and final shaping to maintain integrity between the hardened steel and the unhardened iron. I was very happy seeing his impeccable result, which was just what I had hoped for as a canvas for my engraving /inlay. Neither of us is aware of any instance of iron and steel being combined in this way, with the iron as a decorative field, in some previous work. An unexpected gift appeared in the steel/iron melding. On the concave side, in the boundary between the patterned steel and iron, there appears a dendritic pattern and bands of carbon migration. These phenomena only became apparent after etching the blade. I think this surprise significantly enhances the beauty of the blade, especially as it appears on the Luna moth spirit side. There is a hint of the dendritic pattern on the convex side in the very far forward point of the iron. This is also not something we have seen in other bladesmithing. The subject of my engraving is the Luna Moth and its remarkable, brief adult life. These extremely beautiful moths only live as adults for 5 to 7 days. Also they have no mouthparts for eating, and they can smell a mate 7 miles away, through their antennae. On the front side of the knife I chose to show the adult flying to its mate using 22k gold to represent its full vitality. On the reverse, the pure silver inlaid moth represents the spirit of the moth on its way to the next life. Overall length: 35 cm (13.75”) I’m very interested in hearing what anyone can add around the dendritic crystallization. It appears somewhat like what is seen in meteorites, so perhaps it is related to the nickel content of the 15n20.

It's taken me almost a week to post this, but I recently wrapped up this partizan for my father-in-law. This is the first spear of any kind I've done, and I certainly learned a lot about how to do the sockets. I also learned a lot about compound planes and transitioning from one cross-section to a drastically different one It's a welded socket, and there is a plug at the end of it that is welded to the blade. I now know to make the plug and blade out of one piece and then weld the socket on, but live and learn. There is also a weld flaw in the socket that I heavily debated closing up with the arc welder, but I opted to wire brush it clean and leave it because it added some character. The socket is 1018 and the blade 6150, hardened to 54-56 HRC. The haft (which I did not make myself) is laminated ash and I did a basic leather sheath to accompany it. The overall length including haft is 72". I will have to take more detailed measurements of the blade and weight later, but the whole head is around 25.5", with an 18" or 19" blade. More or less it's a sword at the end of a pole, though it's actually on the short side for historical partizans. Overall it came out better than expected and is a LOT of fun to handle. Originally I wasn't planning on doing another spear any time soon, but knowing what I know now, I may do another. Let me know your thoughts. -A.J.

I just finished this chef's knife as a thanks for all that my wife's family has done for us. I plan to give it to them next time we go up to visit. The blade was made in part from an old twisted rod of damascus left over from my sword making a few years back. The rest was 1080 from NJSB. The bloster and butt cap are made from wagon tire. The little nails were made from bigger nails from broken down pallets. The handle was salvaged from an old rifle stock that my old boss was about to put in the wood stove.

Big tomahawk I finished up last year just sold, took new photos with my little pile of fieldstone. Here's the blog post for more photos https://www.irontreeforge.com/post/last-look-at-great-hawk Great Hawk by Iron John Logan is off to it's new home so last chance to capture some beautiful photos before it's gone. Inspired by great tomahawks of the Northern Great Plains this one-of-akind peace pipe tomahawk was handmade using painstaking traditional techniques, finishes and patinas. Forged head of iron with steel bit, one-piece pipe bowl and extensively file worked into late 19th century moldings and facets. Deep beautiful multiple color patina achieved using reactive natural clays and daily washing for over a year careful tedious work. Hand carved curly maple handle with faceted band matches the head and has an expertly inlayed pewter mouth piece. Fringed buckskin gasket and painted buckskin wrap with brass tacks. This large tomahawk measures 11 inch head from edge to pipe bowl, 25 inch handle. Sold

52100/15N20 stretched crushed W's with curved stainless fittings and Iron Wood handle I have made a lot of knives with Iron Wood and never seen a piece like this.

Not knife related, but it was in the shop... Too cold to run the smoker outside, so I fired up the coal stove and got the shop up to around 40F. I was going to do that anyway to keep stuff from freezing during the cold snap. Once the smoker was fired with apple wood, I opened the windows to keep the smoke and CO levels within limits so I could check it every 15 minutes. CO never got above 60ppm, and with the outside temp at 8 degrees F and a 20 mph wind, the shop stabilized at around 30 degrees F for the next four hours. The result: a 4-lb rack of baby back pork ribs! Sauce on the side, of course. Standard rub of brown sugar, mustard, salt, black pepper, and paprika, basted once an hour with flat ginger beer. The ribs were excellent, and the shop is gonna smell great for the next few months!

A little time expensive though

Yesterday at our guild meeting I was honored by having this dragon turned over to me. I had admired it just after it's creation nearly 30 years ago. Some of you met Mike Rose at our recent Hammer in, he has made many dragons but this has always been my favorite. What a talented artist! Sorry it isn't sharp but I believe this community will appreciate the creativity. When the upload finishes on my slow connection, I have connected some photos into a clip .

A while back I posted a piece of the Lady Wife's work, a knitted, very brightly colored, shawl. This is the same pattern, but done in black and grey. We think it looks like damascus. Geoff and Marianne

I was telling someone the history of the place, and the fact that I do not own it, when I realized I myself joined in September 2003. It's now September 2023. Time flies when you're having fun, I guess... Don Fogg started this place as a page on his personal site in March of 2003 (some digging on the Wayback Machine shows he added a forum in December 2001, but it was on a different set of software I can't get to open now. The current InVision Powerboard format we know and love is what he added in March 2003), and I intended to make this announcement in March. Better late than never!

52100 / 15N20 stretched crushed W's,by maker, stainless fittings and a Lignum Vitae handle.

Hello, thank's for the acceptation. I'm french, and I have create a profil on your forum because I found lot's of information here. (more than french forum). I work with NO power tools. Only fire, file and stone, quenching and tempering with forge... I work with 1095. I have make steel from raw ore with friends and one of my project is make more bloom and more welding with no flux because I love it! I'm in a volcanic area in France (Auvergne) so i have hematite and refractory clay.

Last month I had the great pleasure of heading to Zack Jonas' shop for a week long messer intensive with Peter Johnsson. As a guy who generally works alone, the workshop atmosphere was a delight. With some long hours I was able to get the metal work finished in NH. I secured the grip panels and made the scabbard on my return to CO. The messer is 8670 with forged 1045 fittings, blackwood scales and German silver pins. It was important for me to have a complete object that was a true reflection of the work done in class, so I really limited after class work to a day mounting the scales cut in class, 2 days of scabbard work (sewn leather over wood with a wool lining) and then marking and sharpening the true and false edges.

Dick is defiantly one of the major influences in this direction of my work! He is one of the first I ever saw work in what I have been calling pictorial mosaic, this is the third sucsessful blade in the style for me, the first was Whiskey Sunrise then Ashoken Nights, the Babba Yagga Pattern I did last fall was not successful but also in this vein. I just returned from the NCCA show in Mystic CT took home best forged knife for this one!

Firewalker knife and sheath by Iron John and Copperrein of Iron Tree Forge. Exquisite mineralized bone with integral quillion forge finished blade and beautiful quillwork sheath of tough wearing elk and harness leather. Solid riveted ring suspension makes this set a beautiful and rugged everyday trekker of razor sharp contemporary art. More photos and full description on our blog https://www.irontreeforge.com/post/firewalker-knife-and-sheath

Here is the Claymore finally finished

Just wanted to share my shop and my black powder room. If not for the shop I would not have my room. Over the years I have traded knives for almost all of my black powder stuff. Except for the knives I kept for myself. Anyhow I just wanted to share

Late 18th century town sword I just finished up. Playing with a bunch of new techniques. Silver plated brass, enamelled maple burl, patina and age. For full discription and full size photos here's the blog post https://www.irontreeforge.com/post/new-amsterdam-town-sword-by-iron-john-logan

These knives are forged from a billet of 480 layer random damascus. The one has spalted beachwood on the handle and the other has dyed maple burl, while both have stainless steel fittings. I made these for a dream order. The customer gave me full artistic license to do whatever I wanted so long as they were larger damascus kitchen knives. I took the opprotunity to try a few new things, and for the most part I'm very pleased with these blades. The splated beach was not my first wood choice for the one knife, but I ground through to the tang on the beautiful piece of masur birch I first selected (because when you save a piece of wood for a few years to use on the perfect knife what else would happen!). The maple burl is dyed blue, but after some oil it turned nearly black, which was kind of disappointing. However, the pattern in the damascus more than makes up for the sad handles. Blade specs are: Splated beach 5 7/8" blade 4 1/4" handle 2" heel 0.113 spine 0.008 behind the edge Maple Burl 6" blade 4 1/2" handle 1 7/8" heel 0.113 spine 0.007 behind the edge

Slim fighter. The steel is some cable I got from Mike Bell, rather than twist it, I just welded the ends and ran it through a set of progressive circular dies. I then squared it, cut and stacked it and welded it again. 8.5" blade 13" OL Blued mild steel guard, steel and nickel seppa Carved nickel spacer and butt cap Old Sambar stag handle Geoff

My most recent project, probably the most challenging thing I've ever done. This time i decided to forge a replica of the spear head from Ostrów Lednicki in Poland (cat. no. 31), The original find is very corroded and some parts are missing so i had to interpreted it based on analogues. The iron inlaid in the spear blade is very rare, I know only one. I am lucky to know the guy who was responsible for conservation of this find, i was consulting with him many things during forging. I was able to know much more about technology than from book itself. To forge it i used only scrap metal i collected on the scrap yards. More details about forging and techniques i used i will show in the video tutorial on YT.

This one I actually made sometime last year (or the year before, I'm bad with time ) and then it gathered dust on a shelf as I just couldn't decide what kind of sheath it should have. As I was having a bit of a brainblock while working on something else I had to take a break and figured I could just as well try out this style of sheath that is actually very commonly made around here but for some reason I never have before. I'd like to think it complements the simple lines of the knife itself. And then there's this one. It took several turns away from the original sketch. I had planned on some kind of bowieish style of coffin handle but I think I ended up with something that might be interpreted closer to a sgian dubh. Probably going to make a simple sheath in that line for it, next year or the year after

I'm one of those lucky people who got today off, so I had the time to finish this project.I got the tooling a little off, but that's the way she goes sometimes.... I also fell slightly short of the dimensions when compared to the original. Stats: Blade length is 422 mm. OAL 460 mm. Blade width at base is 33 mm. Thickness at spine is 6 mm. Bronze fittings and the handle is walrus ivory and stabilized walnut burl. Gotlandic style sheath with bronze hardware. Sorry about the cheesy back drop, but it's been raining for two days straight and I don't know when I'll be able to get some good pics. For now, it's the cell phone and a terricloth. Here's the package. The handle The blade. Oh yeah. I decided to peen the top of the peen block and erase the visible pin.

I thought it would be fun to show some of my work here again, I'm really bad at sharing what I make. This is 80crv2 steel with bronze fittings and some absolutely spectacular stabilized birch, I wish I had bought more of this handle material. The better I get with polishing surfaces the harder I make it for myself to take good pictures. If anyone is interested I have a few pictures of making this knife, I could post those later.

Here are a couple more San Mai hunter i just finished. 52100/420SS , G10 and Turkish Walnut handles.

OK, been here on this site only a month and have been pinging everyone for questions -- and I really appreciate all the help. So here is my 16th knife -- finished! I am my own worst critic because it isn't perfect, but thought I would post to show some of my work. The blade is 275 layer Damascus 1095/15N20 with a faint diamond pattern. Scales are G-10. I made all of the parts for this knife including a 1080 tempered lock spring. Fun build -- but man, this design of lock blades must be exact on the fit-up or the knife is total junk!

Got an order from a Pitmaster customer for a traditional Butcher (bull nose) knife. I'm making 2 one lighter about .223 mm at the heel the other .310 both about 8 inches. There Aeb-l with bolsters I cast out of a boat propeller. BTW one is sanded to 240.

I've just finished a reproduction of one of my favorite early medieval swords, the sixth-century serpent-bladed spatha from the cemetery at West Heslerton (UK). West Heslerton is a weird and wonderful cemetery. It was discovered by a gravel mining company, and was subsequently excavated, analyzed, and published to a delightfully thorough extent. The cemetery is in the north of England, between York and Scarborough. Many of the burial practices are unusual compared to the rest of England. There are graves with unique types of amulets, at least one female-sexed person buried with weapons (next to a Bronze Age barrow), and a lot of other cool things. Most importantly for us, the iron artifacts were all analyzed in a lab and we have metallographic studies of many of the spearheads and, happily, the sword. The sword was made with a central serpentine twist, achieved by welding a low-phosphorus bar between two high-phosphorus strips. It had steel edges, which were slack quenched and had a bainite microstructure. The whole metallographic analysis, conducted by Brian Gilmour, is published in this wonderful book: ------------------ For my reproduction, I used bloomery iron and steel from 6 different smelts. Five of the smelts were mine, and the sixth was high-P iron I bought from Lee Sauder. One of the blooms: I welded up two edge bars from 16-layer high-carbon bloom sandwiched between bloomery iron. For the central core, I welded a single bar of 16-layer medium-carbon steel between two 4-layer bars of high-phosphorus iron. I then sandwiched that between two bars of folded low- and medium-carbon iron/steel. (In hindsight, I shouldn't have used medium-carbon steel; it kept wanting to burn at the high welding heats. Lesson learned for next time.) I twisted a zig-zag pattern into the bar... ...and forged it back to square, creating the central serpent twist. This is how the original was done (rather than the method of cutting out wedges with a chisel or bandsaw). Then I welded up the bars... ...and marked out the distal taper, in 1/5ths increments (6-5mm thick for the first 1/5, 5-4,mm for the next 2/5ths, and 4-2mm for the final 2/5ths)... ...and forged the profile. Some careful grinding to clean up the surface: The pattern is pretty shallow, so I tried not to take off too much--always a challenge with these surface-level patterns. It barely warped in the quench! I tempered in hot oil, bending out a few little warps between heats. --------------- The sword's hilt was made from cattle horn, none of which survived. We have a good idea what these hilts looked like, however, thanks to some lucky soil chemistry at a different cemetery (Snape, UK) which preserved many of the horn and wood artifacts. Here's the Snape hilt: And here's mine: Capping off its horn hilt, the West Heslerton sword had a small copper-alloy pommel. This would have been cast, and was hollow. I'm not up for that, so I ground mine from solid brass. Most early medieval British copper alloy was made from recycled Roman metal; mine was a recycled door pull. After this, I spent most of a day sanding the blade, wrapping up with a ferric chloride etch (5:1 water : FeCl, 4x15-min etches). I assembled the sword (with help from a bit of epoxy--cheating!), then carefully peened the tang. This part always makes me nervous! And: done! I like it. The serpent twist is, imo, too narrow. I'll spread the central bar more on my second attempt. But for a first try (and the third sword I've ever made), I'm happy.

Stuff I'm working on. Apex ultra with stainless cladding and wrought iron.

A couple of months back I was asked to produce a range of simple sgian dubhs for a high end craft shop in Edinburgh. We settled on a very simple basic pattern, to be handled in either plain bog oak, or bog oak with an antler face, with one structural pin and one decorative mosaic pin, and we also discussed a kwaiken inspired style as well. After a month which started with me getting covid, then a ridiculous cold, and then tweaking my neck to the point where I've barely been able to move for the past week, probably caused by trying to work when I was still way too weak, the deadline is fast approaching. I've got the first batch ready for polishing and gluing. I'm pretty pleased with how they're turning out, but we'll have to see how they sell when the place opens in a couple of weeks...

For my tenth sword I decided to make a classic Type X with inspiration from Oakeschott's X.13 and an example found at the Swiss National Museum. The scabbard is made with a wooden core lined in wool and covered in leather. It features a sewn rain guard, subtle border in the body, and a long leather chape; all are hand stitched at the back. The red color matches the leather sword grip, which itself is embossed with two risers over a thread wound wooden body. Mass: 1166g Blade: 845mm long, 48mm wide POB: 175mm from the cross Studio photos by Charley Freiburg

This one was the last one I made for bladeshow, based on on original in a friends collection, these little daggers were carried by women as protections, the guard shape and silver sheaths seem to be a standard of the style. The blade on this one is made from CT river blacksand, it was a direct reduction in a crucible with equal weight of charcoal fines and a small piece of cast iron form a previous smelt to help consolidate .. very inefficient method do not think I will be repeating it. The guard is cast sterling silver, as is the sheath, the sheath is tipped with a ruby. The handle is carved from stabilized dyed birch .

Dear fellow bladesmtihs, I am happy to announce upcoming classes in the series Sword Reflections that Zack Jonas is hosting with me as guest tutor. The first class is Messer Madness, 13th - 19th of April 2023 During the weeklong class “Messer Madness” we will travel in time to learn about the faschinating weapon that is the ancestor to both the cutlass and the bowieknife. The ”Messer” (German for “knife”) could vary in size from sturdy but compact Bauernwehr (Farmer´s protection) to medium length lange messer (“long knife”) to the large kriegsmesser (warknife) that was a two handed weapon for war. Being both very practical and supremely efficient weapons, they saw widespread popularity among people from all walks of life, from humble farmers to the highest elites in society, during the 15th and 16th centuries. During the week we will look closely at aspects of design and construction concerning cross section, distal taper and balance as well as the traditional forms of guards with their distinctive “nagel” that served to protect the knuckles. Each attendee will have the option to make a single handed or a hand and half sized messer with a choice of different blade and hilt designs. Each attendee is required to bring a blade blank made to our specifications and ready for heat treat on day one. The second is Scabbard Class, 22nd - 26th of April 2023. On popular demand we will again arrange a five day class about the construction of a medieval wooden-core, fabric-lined, leather-bound scabbard, built for your own sword, dagger or messer. The craft of scabbard making has a lot in common with book binding, from the materials used like texitle, leather and glue to the decorative techniques involving carving and embossing of leather. Various options for belt attachment will be part of the curiculum as will be the manufacture of scabbard chapes. It is a class that is both pleasant and rich in content with long working days. These century old techniques may as easily be applied in the making of scabbards for contemporary custom blades as for period pieces. A well made scabbard can be thing of real beauty that complements and elevates any hand made knife, dagger or sword. Both classes will be held in the workshop of Zack Jonas in Warner, New Hampshire. Please contact Zack via email (zackjonas@gmail.com) for more information and application. These classes tend to be well attended and slots are quickly filled.