Gary Mulkey

Jaro, Bowie had the knife made for fighting/dueling and the offset handle kept his hand out of the way when slashing with the knife.

The top & bottom of the tang are now silver plated and the scales & pins epoxied (AcraGlas) in place. Once I get the hollow handle pins cut to length and the scales sanded smooth the next step is the pommel wrap:

This is number 3 but I have done other James Black knives as well. ( I'm getting very familiar with coffin handles.)

I took another commission for this classic. Got the silver plating soldered to the blade: Silver plating the filework: The handle pins are 1/8" tubing. They will get a 1/16" pin to hold the domed pin heads. I will add the engraved escutcheons last so as not to scratch them. I got the handle scales attached tonight. I'll start with the silver pommel wrap tomorrow. Then it will be making the 20 domed pin heads.

Sometime you need to reverse engineer things and design the knife around the steel. [I would guess that the bad weld resulted from too short of a soak time.]

I've not had much success with rewelding. Were it me, I would use the larger piece for a blade and the smaller one for fittings.

Since you're going to glue the pieces, something that can make it easier is to glue them to some heavy paper. This will hold them in place until you get them into the canoe and it burns off which will eliminate any oxygen inside the can as well.

Geoff, I haven't spent much time here for a while and just saw this. I hope you don't mind me jumping in here. From what I see, you have nice tight joints with your pieces which is important. If you custom make a canoe to fit then the pieces can't move within the can and tack welding them won't be needed. With the arrangement that you have I would recommend that your first welding blows should be light hand blows on the edges. Once you are confident that all is welded then you can use heavier blows on the flat sides of the canoe. [One good tip is to use

I am awaiting arrival of more steel before continuing with this project. This pattern wouldn't stand very well on it's own and needs to be alternated with another. I'll probably use some variation of a Crushed W. For the Fleur de Lis, I believe that I will need to make it from a W pattern rather than a simple layered damascus. Also, I will need to use a nickel steel powder for the background so as to show the profile of the Fleur better. I had hoped that the carbon steel powder that I used had enough difference in manganese content to do that but obviously I was mistaken.

I got my cannister welded today but made the mistake of using straight 1084 powder and the exact outline of the Fleur disappeared. I had originally planned on using a 4% nickel powder for contrast and should have stayed with that idea as it would have exposed the profile of the fleur. What I got was only the 15N20 layers which appear quite distorted. Oh, well. I'll still use this billet for something else. Time tonight for some re-engineering. LOL

I've got it engineered in my head. We'll see if everything works out as planned. I enjoy the challenge of doing something for the first time.

For my next big project I decided that I want multiple damascus Fleur de Lis inlays amidst some crushed "W" tiles. I want the Fleur de Lis patterns to be of damascus on a background of plain carbon steel but as they will be reasonably small & thin and normal damascus layers would get lost, I made some 5 layer billets for it. What you see here is approx. 1" tall and 5" long. These three pieces will get band sawed lengthwise so I can insert another flat 5 layer piece in between the halves for the horizontal band in the center of a traditional Fleur de Lis. Once I have the Fleu

The blade here was made from six bars of irregular layers of 1080 & 15N20. The two in the center were twisted less(both left & right handed) than the top & bottom pairs, stacked and then welded like a Merovingian or Turkish pattern. I think that it gave it a very distinct and unique pattern. The handle scales are mastodon with fittings of 416 & some diagonally coin edged nickel silver with a guard forged from a bar of A36 & hot blued in 500 degree salts.

Profiled to match:

Having completed all of my scheduled classes it's time to work on some orders. This one is a familiar design which I've made before. I'm sure most here will recognize it.