Jaron Martindale

Let's Say this year is closed for sign-ups! If You have a Finished Knife please Post it in the Finished Knives Thread so the Drawing can commence as soon as Alan is done recovering from the Hammer-In If You were unable to start or finish an offering (you still have a day or two to maybe slip in under the gate!) Please let us know here so we know how many entries to be expecting. Thank You all for your Enthusiasm and the Awesome entries so far!

ooooh man, hard choices.... I think I like that higonokami juuuusst a little bit more, but they are both fantastic!

I made it on time! I was worried for a week or so there.... 1065 Straight Razor with Orange Osage and Resin Stand.

..Just by the Hair on my chin chin chin.... I wanted to challenge myself this year again, so I decided that a Razor would be a good every day use blade (maybe not for the crowd here...) that would be sufficiently challenging. Then I realized I had never done a Hollow Grind before....OH WELL! This is my "handle-less" Straight Razor made from differentially hardened 1065 with a Resin and Orange Osage Stand. There is a slight Hamon, but because it's boring I opted to leave the blade at a satin finish. The Stand is a Slab of Orange Osage in Resin with some Copper shavings placed on top of the bark to give it some color. It is very stable and comfortable in the hand, even for a novice straight-razor user like me. What a Learning Curve!

Last Ditch Effort for a possible KITH entry...... clayed 1065, Trying to decide if I want to drill a hole to attach a handle, or just leave it as is

That would be quite the eye catcher!

Thank You, Alan! I'm excited to venture into this brazing business, but I see a lot of youtube video's in my future... Do you think a hand held MAP torch would do the trick to heat it up, or do I need to find someone with an OA torch? I'm excited to get it all back together and start using coal again. Propane, while extremely convenient, just doesn't quite do it for me, lol! Now to see if I can find some fun colors for the forge

Thank You! I wondered if the body was cast iron or not just because of the age, but it's suspiciously light for being almost 3 feet long so you're probably right.

Hello All! I am looking for any assistance, suggestions, observations, or otherwise mostly (I'd settle for loosely-ish) relevant comments about restoring this coal forge I recently purchased. My current coal forge is deteriorating (a homemade job I purchased off craigslist a few years back) and when I saw this one on craigslist for less than $100 I couldn't respond fast enough, lol! I wanted to show it to you all for any suggestions on things to be done or maintenance I may have overlooked. Came with the body, a blower and arm, and the coal pot and piping. No cracks or large holes in the main body, and the blower works beautifully. It'll need Legs which I'm thinking of wedging schedule 40 pipe in the leg "ports" on the bottom of the main body, and a couple new bolts, but otherwise I THINK this will be a good forge. size 9.5 foot for reference (that was soon set upon by an angry bee after I stepped on it...teach me to be barefoot in the summer time) I'm excited about the potential of a water reservoir for cooling tongs or potentially hardening, but I'm a little hesitant if this is a cast-iron forge body if water would cause cracking... I removed the bolts from the pot as they were bent and so rusted I didn't think I could get a nut on them. I'll replace with stainless or uncoated bolts small hole in the pot...not sure if it can be patched, or if it really needs patched....maybe just punch some expanded-steel into the pot to prevent any coals from escaping clinker breaker is in pretty good shape, even with a crack on one side And The various other pieces of piping for the bottom. I'm thinking of just giving it a once over with a mild steel brush on my angle grinder and putting it together. Would there be anything I could do to help extend its life? Maybe painting it after cleaning it up, or coating in some type of refractory? Thank you all for any help or suggestions!!

Got greedy straightening out a tang on a kitchen knife last night while tempering and snapped the tang in half Good thing that came out of this though: the new heat treat furnace works!!! Pretty happy with that grain (ignore the nasty mix of oil and brass shavings my grimy fingers put on the bottom piece..) I plan to shorten the knife from an 8" chef to ~7-6.5" chef to gain back some of the tang.

Quick glue-up of the handle components/bedding of the tang for the dagger. Tang and Guard were thoroughly waxed prior and the handle came off and goes back on; HUZZAH! And I picked up a bench relic to add a handle. This is Maple from a neighbor who had his tree trimmed about 2 years back. I was extremely excited to see such beautiful figure in what I thought would be a relatively plain block of wood! I have several other handle blocks I'm now excited to start using ...please don't ask what kind of knife this is...every now and again I just make something and let my mind wander away while doing it...

Drilled a bunch of pin holes, this time BEFORE hardening, lol! And drilled more holes and filed holes. I still don't enjoy slotting handle pieces and guards, but I figure if I force myself to do it enough I may at least learn to be half-decent at it..

NICE! Far better than even my 10th hardenable steel knife, much less my first, lol! If you're sticking with a Seax design I might suggest you grind the blade side back a bit so the blade and spine are about equidistant from the tang. On the other hand, without reading your description I thought it looked like a well done K-tip kitchen knife or a good start towards a bowie, so you also have lots of options if you don't want to change any design elements. I look forward to seeing the final product, Keep going!

Been working through work OT and car issues lately, but I found some time in the last month or so to forge out and grind a few knives. Now on to heat treat!

I know you can get burrs for the dremel that are carbide that cut non-hardened steel(I've used one in my drill press as a makeshift manual CNC, haven't even snapped one....yet....>_>...), and I know @David D. of Cedarlore Forge uses a dremel cut off wheel to do a lot of his carving. Other than that maybe have a friend who has a Cricut cutter(or similar) cut out your runes on vinyl and electro-etch them in?