Pieter-Paul Derks

I've got some progress to show again, I'm really enjoying myself with this one. the blade finish forged: The profile and flats ground before heat treat, and some filing done on the shoulders. I like to heat treat as soon as possible, this way I have room to grind out small warps and I like to do most of the work with 60 grit anyway. I never really understood why people grind knives to 220 grit before heat treat. And the knife finish ground ready for hand sanding, I also have a design now My plan is to use stainless for the g

Really Nice! As a kid I had to make do with a curved stick

Thanks everyone! I admit it doesn´t have any real tanto shape, the construction method is though, although there are some extra alingment pins the silhouette was really important to me, I have spent a lot of time holding it up to the light. I was actually thinking of Don Fogg when I made this, his fusion pieces are really inspiring to me. The cross section was a real head scratcher, I found out quickly that I couldn´t do it on the grinder, so I eventually did the entire thing with files and edm stones, to get the ridgeline where I wanted it the bevels chang

I recently finished something that would be nice to show here. I actually started this knife in june last year, this is the longest I've ever worked on anything. I actually started as a relaxing blade to make for myself between commission work, but it fought me every step of the way, and turned out to be super difficult to make the way I envisioned. As I was finally making some good progress I decided to move out of my parents house and go live on my own, it is super exciting but left me with little time to work on knives. Sadly I can't forge at my own place,

it is stamped 209 kilos, so that would be about 460 Ibs, it was made in 1913. I also have a 60 pound stake anvil by the same manufacturer from the same year, when I saw that one pop up on an online marketplace it couldn't help but re-unite them. These anvils are forged from cast steel, and the faces are really hard and almost an inch thick, thats why mine is still so flat after a hundred years, the downside is that the edges chip easily. Since this picture was taken I have actually added another rack on the other side of the swage block, and I still can't fit everythin

It is a ´´Soeding und Halbach´´ in a north german pattern, these have the hardy hole near the horn and no pritchel. As a proud anvil dad I should have a picture somewhere on my pc

Today I had a surprise free afternoon after work and I felt like forging instead of doing the things that I should be doing. I figured this would be the perfect time to start on this year´s Kith. So I rummaged around the shop and found an end piece of a Damascus billet, this billet is very low layer twist I originally made for Damascus rings, I have no idea if the pattern will look good on a knife, If it turns out ugly I will just start another. The billet was almost the right size so it wasn´t much work at all to forge it to a 1´´ x 0.5´´ x2 inch block.

I've had to do similar filing exercises for jewelry, so I'm not really saying that it can't be done. I was thinking of the changing of the bevel angle towards the tip and convexity, and many old knives are not really ''precise'' in that way. I really love scrapers and use them on almost every handle I make, they are real nice to quickly get rasp marks out of an handle. A set like the picture below is fairly traditional and allows for most shapes. I would think those old scandinavian handles were scraped with a puukko type knife held at an angle. I know spoon a

There's a lot to like about this one. I love frame handles and that giraffe bone is real nice.

I find myself thinking about the ´´softness´´ of old knives a lot, while I don´t want to make historical or rustic knives I have the urge to rebel against the super clean lines of modern knifemaking, I agree with Jeroen, I think the most important thing you can do to capture the spirit of originals is use original processes. A blade that is hand filed to shape is never really flat, a bit of convex and twisting of the planes is almost unavoidable. These old puukko handles were probably split from a block and carved with a knife, and scraped to finish, I imagine this leads

I´ve seen Jesus Hernandez do that at Owen´s hammerin a few years back. My mind is still blown to this very day. I guess if you have that level of skill the heat treating gods are kind to you.

If I were you I would look around for an old hornless anvil or even an anvil with a broken horn, these are quite common in germany and would be perfect for bladesmithing. If I didn't already have an anvil I would go this route myself. some of the church window anvil are actually very similar in size and weight to the japanese anvils. I have no idea where you are in germany but with a 5 minute search I found this link which would be all you'd ever need for forging knives. Just as an example of what can be found for reasonable prices. https://www.ebay-kleinanzeige

Thanks for the replies, this will help in the future. My epoxy isn't runny at all, more of an thick honey consistancy, so I suspect that was part of the problem.

I really like this one, often knives in this style have no rayskin, but I think it really classes the whole thing up. How did you stabilize the wrap, It doesn't look saturated with glue, the time I tried to stabilize a wrap it was a huge mess and ended up very plasticy.

Oh man this is just so cool! I haven´t even been brave enough to try regular wolfs teeth, let alone teeny tiny ones. Every time you post Emilliano I get the feeling that I need to step up my game.