jheinen

Well that makes me happy. Turns out I have to go out of town the next couple of weekends, and since I'm only really able to work on stuff on the weekends, I was worried I wasn't going to be able to finish.

A hot one in the forge today. I forged out the Journeyman presentation blade I'm working on.

Blade length is 7", 12" overall. 5160 steel, linen micarta scales with red liners, and stainless pins. I don't make many full-tang knives, but I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out.

Finished last night. I probably should have sanded the handle down to 600 grit rather than a buffed finish.

By Odin's beard, that is a fine piece of art!

Making some more progress on this one. Rough shaping of the handle is done.

I glued the scales on this yesterday and started shaping the handle today. Someone on another forum suggested to do most of the shaping before gluing them, which is the way I normally do hidden tang knives. I hadn't thought to do this on a full-tang. What process do you all use?

Origin Blade Maker also has one that works on most 2X72 grinders, and it's about half the cost of Travis'. https://originblademaker.com/product/belt-grinder-2x72-attachment/

I was looking at those, but I'm concerned that you lose an inch of length off the dies. They also seem pretty expensive at around $700 for both flat and drawing dies.

My process is typically 80g ceramic > 120g ceramic > 220g zirc > heat treat > 320g j-flex > 400g j-flex > trizact > scotchbrite.

I want to get new dies for my 25# little giant that are more suitable to knife making. Currently I just have a set of drawings dies. I figured flat dies with radiused edges would be the most versatile, but then I saw these "knife makers" dies on the little giant website. Has anyone used them? I assume the beveled part is for forging bevels, but it seems like a pretty obtuse angle for that? Do you think these would be worthwhile, or should I stick with flat dies?

Yep, already checked. The school handbook prohibits knives with blades 3" or longer.

My 16 year-old daughter forged her first blade today. She had to do a cultural immersion project for her Japanese class, so she made a kiridashi. We started off by making a hook so she could practice some hammer work, and then we got into forging the blade. We used 1" X 1/4" 1080. The blade is now in the tempering oven. I'm so proud of her. She did a great job for the first time ever swinging a hammer.

Well, at the moment I'm sitting in the San Jose airport waiting to fly home to Seattle. Hoping it doesn't get cancelled, and hoping if I *do* make it that the Uber can get to my house.

Billy Joe in Toledo, WA has literally a barn full of anvils, along with piles of post vises. I got my Hay-Budden from him.