Gerhard Gerber

That's a good looking knife Alex, well done! I owe a childhood friend a knife, with a different caliber casing inlaid this would be the perfect knife for him

Great work all round, especially like the idea of the circuit board handles! Where I live we unfortunately need to build the prisons we live in, high walls, electric fencing, alarms etc etc..... Your gate is wonderful, but it doesn't look like it could keep anything in.......or out! Anywhere people have gates like that must be a good place to live!

I used to have a big quench tank but that turned into a bit of a mess, so recently I've been using smaller containers. Canola oil exclusively, I monitor and keep it around 60C by adding more oil if it gets too hot after a few quenches etc etc. Because I pour the oil back into the containers after it's cooled down I can judge the state of the oil, canola gets darker and the oil in my original tank was most likely rotten.

I've wondered about that very thing more times than I can count, same goes from jigged bone, although that looks easier. No idea how they do it, but I reckon I could get it with the experimentation. My problem comes during the assembly stage, you have that unfinished surface that needs to stay as is, and this doesn't gel with my methods. I can't and don't work accurate enough, always need to clean up glue or fix a bit of damage or imperfections. I would love to go work at GEC for a few years and learn all their secrets, their various bone handles are my favourites.

Do a search on youtube for CuMai, I want to remember one or two channels had some good videos.

TIA.......every single government or semi-government institution (like postal services) is there with the sole purpose of deceiving, frustrating and stealing from you......

Chicken & egg situation, if I could get my new burners working I could build the new forge with the proper bricks I acquired nearly 2 years ago and stick a pipe in there..... Been thinking about this a lot seeing the price of kilns, before I've imported it.... Shouldn't say this out loud, but I'm pretty sure I got lucky a few times and did a better HT with a pipe in the forge than with the accurate kiln, specifically carbon steel blades......way less decarb. I have a small container of something that might be water damaged refractory cement, I could never get it to se

Do you mean some anti-scale compound so I can normalize in the kiln? I don't have any refractory cement, and I'm careful about what I put in the kiln because I can't afford to replace it. I try to get at least 2 uses out of each foil envelopes, so I considered using one of those for the 1070 blades, but I mostly make hunting knives in stainless and chef's knives in 1070, so the envelops are too small.

This has been bothering me, especially since I just got some more 1070 and one piece of 1084. Foil situation is unchanged, difficult to get and expensive, reserved for stainless, more so because I hope to get a piece of Elmax in the near future. So I was thinking, I have the gas forge, even if I'm guessing temperature, as long as I don't completely cook the blades they could benefit from a few normalizing cycles before HT in the electric kiln?

The only shop time recently has been spent battling a rather large (what I'm now calling a) butchers knife forged from a huge bearing race......as much of it as I could fit in my forge at least. After profiling I started with the FFG bevels, and I'm alternating between grinding a draw filing, former to remove steel, latter to true everything up. I get mesmerized at times and go to the finer files to see the effect rather than continuing the diet on the grinder, and I know the 36grit belt I was using is way past it's prime.........but the dull belt also made the mistakes smaller and e

I probably won't finish my first attempt at this pattern, too many mistakes at the start. Well done on yours, just have top ask, is net next pin after the pivot necessary?

Don't forget the coffee etch, on some steels (52100 specifically) it gives you a very dark and durable etch, just leave it in very long. Unrealistic expectations from uneducated clients are a pain......

Same for me, multi-piece handles I always assemble on a liner, then the fun of drilling so they match......

So clean and simple.......and perfect!

Labour of love......I need some place like this, but it seems there's not even brick outhouse ownership in my future.....enjoy!