Brian Dougherty

Why does this make me think of "..it's a chicken that got caught in a tractor's nuts"? BTW, nice furniture

Nice piece. I like the brassing you did. It looks very even. How did you heat the parts before you hit them with the brass wheel?

This won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I thought I would share my progress on this as I go along. My family spends the 4th of July holiday in Sheboygan every year, and we spend a lot of time walking along Lake Michigan. Each year I look at all the drift wood thinking it would be nice to make some kitchen knives for us all to use that have driftwood handles from our trip. However, drift wood looks cool as a piece of wood, but I've never thought it would look all the great as handle material. I've been doing a lot of wood stabilization lately, and thought I should bring back some really punky pieces and see what is inside. This is some of what I brought back sliced into 1/2" thick planks: (Toes left in the pic for scale ) It's not presentation grade ironwood burl, but I'll stabilize these, and then probably resin cast them to see what I get. I'm pretty hopeful that I get some scales for a family kitchen knife with some meaning. Stay tuned...

Would the el-cheapo rolling mills out there roll down bronze to the range necessary for pins? I'm sure they are not very good, but it doesn't seem like pin stock needs to be all that precise since most of us peen it over anyway. I have that same issue as the op but with a different alloy

A knife like that, well made, should easily be worth $300. Fwiw, I see a few small fit and finish issues, but I don't think you are far off of that value now. If this is your 6th knife, you should be able to ask more than that soon. $9/hr is not a living wage, but you will also get faster as you get better. Welcome to the knife maker's paradox. Most of us can't afford to buy what we make

I'll let the others comment on how stable the wood will be. However I just pm'd you about stabilizing. Hit me up if you want.

Hate that. I have a handful of orphaned blades and springs waiting for me to make a new match.

I'm 5 minutes away from a TSC store as I type this. I'll have to check that out.

Cool! I have at Thing for turtles That guy has been around for a while.

I never even considered that!

Well, I don't know where you are exactly, but you can't be too far from either Talisker or Torabhaig

Well, that is neat and different. Interesting brown color you got. It almost looks like copper, or even like it is still hot enough to glow slightly.

Well, that idea will certainly give me something to "chew" on for a while...

Cool! Do you think it was compressing down on the 3" dimension with the squaring dies that gave you the tighter pattern between the stripes and the more open pattern in the triangles?

Wow, that cool