sandpile

Great job Mr.Wieland--Lots of tedious time spent here. Great finish to the job. P.S. I have not been to the forum for quite a while. Now it is going to take a bit of time to catch up. Thanks for showing the good work in all the pieces. ~chuck

Another great craftsman. ~chuck

Thank y'all for the great pictures. Cory you are getting the job done on the pictures. Great knives with quite some diverstiy. Great craftsmanship. ~chuck

Owen-- Back to the question of what's the sugar? Your piece very well shows the sweet. It is with a certain pleasure anticipated to look up your work. It is always a nice, well worked, finished piece. The sweet/sugar is the hours of time in planning/making/finishing the job. In one word craftsmanship. ~chuck

Jonathan Nice shape, good quench line and etch I glue one slab, drill that side then glue the other and drill it. This leaves plenty of wood to grind past your 'Oops' with the hastily drilled holes.. Plunge cut guard is one answer. The knife and sheath came out good. Chuck

Richard--Your pig sticker is a real winner in the high end using knife. Sheath, blade steel and shape is good. Guard is good. The whole package is great. Chuck

RAYMOND: Nice stuff: Like Alan I have never heard of 'Bullet Wood' but it is nice looking. Congrats ~chuck

KID TERICO: Enjoy seeing your work. Patience and thought do bring nice things to the table. I just thought I might mention 'BRUCE GRANT'S' nice book, 'Encyloypedia of Rawhide and Leather Braiding' This book(second one, first disappeared) has been around my house and shop for 30 or 40 years. Every once in a while I have to go back for another look at something. There is another good book of braiding and knot tying but I can not re-call off hand the name. God Bless ~chuck

I never was a cat person. My sis-in-law moved in with us going on nine years ago and she is definitely cat crazy. We live a half mile west of the R.R. tracks ten miles Northwest of Dalhart, Tx. This makes for traffic in the seventy to eighty miles MPH and plenty of Coyotes. Both of these are hazardous to pups and cats. We make it a point to train the cat to come when calling the pup in for the night. The cat goes in the sister's bedroom and the pup in the pen. We have lost a lot of cats and dogs to the highway, some to the Coyotes and some to bigger feline predators. The cats are actually smarter than the dogs but damn poor students. A cat can not stand hardly any discipline at all but some will respond somewhat to treats. Neuter the cats and they will pay a little more attention. We(sis-in-law)have had several cats that would follow us(Helen&I)on our walks of an evening. It is comical to see us going out across the pasture with the dogs and a cat playing then investigating every hole and Soap-weed(no trees around here)that has been there every trip for as long as they can remember. Eventually the highway will get them all. We have one Schipperke stud dog that has run loose all his life(9) and has not(yet) been hit by a vehicle. Cats have to hook on to you. You can not force them to do anything like show loyalty, they either will hook to you or they won't at their discretion. You can teach them some tricks but not many. They will not put up with the pressure.

Brent- your neighbor was extremely forunate that he heard the rustling noise. The cats are so quiet you can be twenty feet from them when they come down out of a tree or off a rock, you might or might not hear anything. For him to be ready and off safty is telling of his hunting skills. Y'all are right about the food chain and the sad part of it is the kids on bikes and the jogger with head phones are the prime targets for a hungry cat. A man has almost no defense against a big grown cat. Fight back, make a racket, stand tall and swell up while hollering--if given the chance. I have lost horse colts and mule colts to them. Some with just a bite on the neck and enough claw marks to hang on. Sorry about the post--but people need to be aware. god Bless ~chuck

Nice picture and to be enjoyed for the hunting and winter sports. In my first life(before re-tiring)I always had to work outside from dark til dark so the more snow and wind that we had, made my days and sometimes nights pretty long. A bunch of cows and yearlings on pasture is nice when it is decent weather. The ice chopping in the cold weather is a pain and the hay for the covered up grass makes for an expensive calf. If you are a building contractor---you better have it dried in. My kids loved to play in the snow but hated having to work in it.Grin. The eighty are so feet to my shop door is far enough in a snow storm much less a blizzard. God Bless chuck

I imagine one of the older blacksmiths will be able to tell us. I would think it is a rivet making block could make some bigger spikes. Sure enough good buy. chuck

I got some 1/8" 1095 from Tronny Toler at KNIVES PLUS in Amarillo. I managed five handle pin holes without breaking a HHS bit.-- three tripped the normalization. Forge heated the blade to guess-a-mate of 1400+ or so. Differential quenched in (what I thought too hot Texaco--185) then quenched again just not quite so hot on the color of the blade. Both of these quenches were like you(I) would do in water except the spine never went in the quench--The spine seems to be case hardened(for lack of a better word). Then for the heck of it just to see if it was going break like A2 or stay together. I torched the the first half inch of the blade then quenched a count of four in, out five in to about four hundred or so , then to the preheated 400 + oven. Two one hour draws with a cold water quench after each. I really expected a crack or break in the final quench line. On the off side there is a suspicious place but no crack. It is hard but not much harder than a water quench, again checked by file. I don't have any thermal or hardness testing equipment. I used to have a kiln and heat sticks but now shut the barn door and guess. I did NOT put it in the vise and will not sell it but did put my name on it for the kids later on. I am not photo literate but will see if I can get one of my kids--Grands-- to post it if not I might telephone it to Alan. You can see all three quench lines even with a buffed out etch. I tried to tear this 1095 up but it was just too tough.--Lucky maybe. God Bless chuck P.S. I am not recomending this process to ANYBODY.--Was just curious to see what would happen.

J.D. Thanks for the info. I have some 1" x 1/4" of Aldos 1084 that I bought several years ago. Might not be the same batch as what you tested. I have been using higher temp(150 to 170) Texaco quench and double quenching with two draws at 375 --my oven is not very accurate. Most times with a wet rag, I will torch draw the top to a light blue--Is this what you are calling a soft back draw. I don't try to pull them to a 90--I stop at 40 to 50, trying to get them to go all the way back. I can't imagine why anyone would want to pull a blade to 90 except for an ABS test. thanks chuck bennett

Now that is something. All stainless, perfect welds with a great etch when you finshed. Congrats chuck