Randy Griffin

Agreed, not a lot of practical use other than a great conversation piece. 99.9% of people have never seen a knife that is hair splitting sharp. I like a knife almost shaving to skin and debone and shaving to slice. I guess hair splitting would be good for slicing fish.

Gerhard, if you get interested, I’ve got less than $50 in my sharpening equipment. A diamond block with 4 sides up to 600 grit and wet dry sandpaper up to 3000 grit glued to a piece of glass. I made a strop from some old leather I had laying around. I’ll not sell a knife until I know it’ll get sharp as it was designed to.

My dad once told me how they would sit around at work and see who could get their knife the sharpest. Said they could clip hairs. I’ve always been good at sharpening but could never get one that sharp. Until I made this kiridashi from a ball bearing race. Clipping hairs is not easy. What’s your sharpest knife? FullSizeRender.MOV

Oh yeah, can’t say I’ve found an axe with a root like that but have had to cut many roots to get my treasure while metal detecting. That’s the main reason glass and ceramic doesn’t last in the ground. Roots break most. You guys want to hammer on some old metal, get a metal detector. There’s still a lot of wrought iron in the ground.

I have a piece of 1075 from NJSB so when I use it I will need to quench in water to get the most out of the steel?

I’ve heard they were made in the same factory and that bases were interchanged between the two. The reason some a&h have the caplet. I didn’t know about the dashed diamond though. That’s good to know.

Does it have a caplet shaped indention under the bottom? It could be arm and hammer.

Thanks Alan. I’ll keep that one just because it’s different. After I cleaned them up several still had some life. I’ll keep those as well. I plan to use the rasps for wood and hot work. There’s a website, American made files, that had some information about the three manufacturers. Basically they’re all old companies that were mostly bought out by Nicholson in the early 1900’s.

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Thanks Gerald. I’ve done some forging on it and it works really well. Only thing is if you need to work on the side of the anvil your legs get in the way. Those times I just stand for a minute. Most of my forging is on top anyway.

Found these a couple days ago. The rasp on the right is 16”. Some manufacturers I haven’t heard of. Kearney & foot, McCaffrey and Johnson. All are made in USA. I know the Nicholson and Simonds are good steel but what about these three? I got them only for the steel. They are pretty worn out. and what about that narrow file fourth from the right? What is it? It’s a Nicholson USA but I never seen one like it. The front and back and one edge is flat but one edge is rounded. Thanks for looking

I been a little bit busy in the shop lately. It’s been almost 2 years since my surgery and I’m finally getting to where I can do something. This is over the last few weeks. I still can’t hold out to stand very long so I’ve got my forge and anvil where I can sit and work now. I built my chair from a boat seat on a 3/4” pipe welded to a disc harrow blade. Works really well once I got used to it. With my post anvil between my legs it’s a couple of inches taller than my legs. I built the work table and one just like it on the other side of the shop. I can spin to my right and use t

Nice. How did you get the Osage that dark. It takes a long time to age it naturally.

Looks like Stacy Keach on the right.

It’s going on 2 years now and I still can’t do much in my shop so I’m still watching videos. By God there ain’t a YouTube video out there about blacksmithing and knife making that I ain’t seen. I ran out of new stuff so I been watching fish cleaning lately. Lots of different styles of knives used on fish. I’m partial to the Japanese knives, especially the single bevel ones. I see this one a lot, especially on big tuna and billfish. I been trying to find a name for it with little luck. I see it called master Kuo, tuna knife, fish chopping knife, larding knife, ext. I can see a lot of uses for t