Francis Gastellu

Lovely! As others have stated, the A203 layer works very well! I do not see a pin in the bog oak and obviously no ito to secure the kashira, so I am curious. Might I ask how you constructed the handle? I imagine that the oak was pierced rather than split in halves? Does the nakago still have a traditional form? Did you extend it through to pin or thread the kashira?

A lovely piece with just the right mix of style and function. No nonsense yet beautiful, this is one I would proudly wear on my belt every day, if it were allowed.

I had missed this earlier post, that handle is really (really) lovely!

Mastery in elegance. Such beautiful work from both of you... Thank you for sharing, Jim.

I absolutely love seeing those test plates and following your progress sculpting those complex designs. Thank you for sharing your journey!

What an incredible beauty! Very well done.

Wow!

I find habakis to be incredibly finicky. Getting them to close up "just right" is a challenge that barely gets any easier with practice. You're been doing a lovely job on the big blade in spite of your setbacks (which imho only make it more impressive), can't wait to see it completed!

What a beauty... Like Doug said, it really makes you want to pick it up an feel it in your own hand. I wish I could. Excellent work!

That is such creative and beautiful work! Thank you for sharing this.

Nicely done!

What did I do in my future shop today. Back in June I moved out of the US and back to my home country in France with my fiancée and we've been in a bit of a limbo ever since. It took some time but we finally found and bought a house that ticked all the boxes. It's an old farm house from the 1850's, with an attached barn that will eventually serve as my shop. "Eventually" because there's quite a bit of work to do before we can actually move in, and the barn will serve as a staging area for the renovations for the next few months. Still, I found myself strangely excited about cleaning up all the donkey crap from the floor. N95 required, seriously. If you squint hard enough, you can see a really nice shop there, I swear. I'm excited to be back at it eventually, this is turning out to be a very long year...

I absolutely love this. It was great to see the additional photos on your site too, it is a beauty.

Looks stunning! Inspiring work...

They look really good!