Jziegenbein

that's definitely larger than I was expecting to see for a quick knife. Very nice, i too like the recurve. It looks like one hell of a chopper

Time for an update. I profiled the blade somewhat on my weakling of a belt grinder and also straightened out any wobbles it had in the forge and normalized thrice Here I cut a slab of red oak (on my newly installed post vise ) into overthick scales which i'll glue together and use for the wood portion of the handle, rather than the wenge The blade fortunately survived the triple quench in hot oil and an hour or so tempering at 400 degrees. It came out nice and springy, but still stiff I also forged the tang a bit more before final normalizing to make it better tapered The blade is fully ground to 220grit on the belt sander, now for lots of elbow grease and sandpaper. I also drew out a to scale sketch to go by Bringing the blade up to 220grit hand sanded And all the way up to 600grit, although not perfectly sanded yet since i'm sure it will be scratched a bit before i glue it to the handle. here I'm filing my shoulders a bit closer to square, I'm determined to get at least a decent fit on the guard an action shot of me etching in my logo, using only an xacto blade, drain cleaner, packing tape, and a 9volt battery horrible photography aside, the mark didnt turn out incredibly this time. my results with this method aren't always stellar And that does it for the blade work the guard and pommel are marked out onto the wrought Iron. Now i need to fix my angle grinder so i can cut them out once again, thanks for looking

I'm liking the look of this one. good, clean forging for a third knife, i'll be looking forward to seeing more

Thanks you guys! and that's a great idea! maybe not from a wine barrel per se, but some oak

Since I dont know of many true myths to base a knife around, I decided to do a LOTR flavored knife In my head, this is something that was carried by one of the raft elves on their journeys from mirkwood to the long lake The plan so far is for it to be made of 52100, wrought iron for the fittings, wenge for most of the handle with (ineptly)carved antler spacers and spacers of a high performance polymer my brother manufactures. Without further ado: Thanks for lookin

great work on that , I love the look of low layer damascus. I wish it was done more often that way

That knife is sick, do i see a hamon?

oh wow, that's nice! i really dig the wide blade

That is just incredible! definitely looking forward to more

These are wonderful! you have a great sense of form. simple, clean, and elegant lines as always.

I'm tentatively in. If i can whip up a good knife in time, i'd love to take part.

Hey all, forgive my absence for the past year or so. My life suddenly became exponentially complex with school, scouts, and band eating up all of my spare time. But that's beside the point, I finally cranked the forge back up and began a new project. I started out with a large ball bearing, forged the outer race into a bar and just went with the shape as it happened. I was going more for gaining practice with this knife than really trying anything new. I triple normalized and triple quenched the blade in hot oil, then tempered 2 1hour sessions at 400F, sanded up to 600grit The handle is made from some scrap canvas micarta I had laying around The Dimensions: Blade - 4 1/8" long, 1" wide at the widest Handle - 3 3/8" long The spine tapers from 4mm at the ricasso to 1mm at the tip OAL - 7 1/2" long Anyway here are a few mediocre pictures Thanks for looking

Wow, It's been a year and a half. I'm terribly sorry about my disappearance, life managed to butt its ugly head into my knifemaking time. I made a small mistake gluing the handle on before polishing the front of the bolster, which took the wind out of my sails for a while as well. Anyways, I finally decided to pick it back up and finish it In the 3 days it took me to finish this I: polished the front of the bolster as best I could with the blade in the way cleaned and re-etched the blade cleaned up the edges of the handle as best I could, there's still some wobble I couldnt get out Polished the bone and the bolster The horribly fit buttcap turned out to be silver plated steel, so I opted for an acid resist etch Polished everything again and wicked some wood stain into the cracks and filework to give it some depth The Dimensions are: Blade - 5 5/8" Handle - 4 1/4" OAL - 9 7/8" The handle tapers from front to back going from 3/4" to 7/8" at the buttcap All in all I'm not 100% happy with this piece. It's chock full of flaws and shortcomings, but it's a good indicator of where my skills are now, and it was a good challenge. Sorry about the bad pictures, these are taken with yet a different phone. I'll have a buddy of mine take some real pictures of it Once again, sorry about the ridiculous delay. Thanks for looking, I'd love some critiques

I used to use that exact model of sander in the exact position you use it. I definitely recommend saving up for a grizzly, because it's about 10X faster at removing material. I was eventually forced to buy another sander when my old craftsman caught on fire from wood dust and sparks. knife is looking great!

very nice, i especially like the file fittings.

cause I like it...

i really like the shape. it reminds me of ed fowler's work

how did i miss this until now? that is a MASSIVE seax! and incredibly executed!

how many times did you normalize? that looks to me like some awesome alloy banding.

thanks! got a little more done on it tonight, namely soldering (badly) the buttcap together and rough grinding it flush with the flats of the handle. i got a new phone, so the pics are slightly better this time i hope.

thanks for the tips and encouragement guys! i'll definitely check out that forum. odds are i'll have the whole thing filled with epoxy before i start finish work on it.

a couple more horrible pictures to show the filework a little bit better.

most of the rough filework is done and i got the buttcap started. i'm going to solder the silver together and then engrave it. what kind of tool should i use for engraving? ive never actually tried before.

thanks you guys! this is a serious challenge, getting the windowpanes crisp and the flats flat is not easy. handle ground to shape up to 320grit and file work started. after i get the filework roughed in, i'll start on the buttcap

i only recently discovered bell dirks. i'd never even heard of them, before seeing some of the topics on here. the design struck me as interesting. different from pretty much anything else. since i've been working on a couple massive chopping commissions, i wanted to do something slender and pointy. so here is my feeble attempt. its still a work in progress, and since i've never really done one of those before either i thought i'd try a double helping of new. the blade is some 1/8" thick alabama damascus that i forged some into the the right dimensions and close to the right shape before final grinding. here it is basically finished, minus a final etch and polish. my initial sketch can be seen on the paper it's sitting on. the handle is what im told is ostrich bone and a solid brass bolster. it's not exactly a bell dirk, so it isnt integral and im not using all silver. grinding to the right dimensions, allowing extra material for the windowpanes. a bad picture of one of the panes filed closer to shape. the top window pane another of the side windowpanes. another dry fit to show the basic shape. sorry about the abismal pics, they were all taken with my phone as i worked. the buttplate will be some cutouts of a silver platter, soldered together. thanks for looking