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hi everyone! Alright, so I'm spending somewhat of an eternity working on the sheath of this thing - so I've decided to post at least half of the thing... the knife itself. Let me present - Draumr Gripnir - the "Dream Grip" - with some unintended fingermarks and all! Blade in two bars of folded and twisted railroad steel, with a third bar (edge) of 15n20 and ferrier's rasps. Handle i copper, brass, camel bone and vulcanized fiber. The runes engraved in the brass reads "keep your blade sharp, but your mind sharper". The nut on the end really tested my skills as an aspiring "jewler". Anyhow - sheath and complete measurements to come. Needless to say, this is one heavy knife due to the massive materials in the handle. Sincerely, Alveprins.

According to the Örvar-Odds saga, Hafgufa was the mother of all sea monsters and fed on whales, ships, men, and anything it could catch. Hafgufa was said to have lived underwater, and when the tide was low at night, her nose and head would rise out of the water. The only physical description provided in the saga is the nose sticking out of the water, which was mistaken for two massive rocks rising from the sea. Source: Wikipedia Blade: 5.625″ Wrought Iron Spine, 1095/15N20 Twist, 1095 Edge This blade was forged to feel like a sea creature. The middle bar is oddly twisted to look like tentacles reaching out through the tides of the ocean just under the surface of the sea, which is represented by rippled wrought iron. The point of the blade is structured to feel like the side profile of a ship with a gentle curve upward to a stable deck. Handle: 4.25″ Wrought Iron, Extinct Sea Cow Rib Bone, Copper Pin The handle is hand carved from extinct sea cow bone. The carving is of kraken tentacles reaching upward and grasping at the copper pin, which much like a sail on a ship is the main element that can rip the piece apart. The guard is also wrought iron and has the word, “Kraken” carved into in on both sides in runes. Overall: 10″ Spine: .125″ through break POB: center of the guard Check my ETSY store for availability. Check out the build pics here: http://rashystreakers.tumblr.com/tagged/kraken%20seax

Weston Hunting Camp: 1976 This is the finished blade that my cousins (Dan, Ken, Nick and Matt) and I made over the weekend in my forge. This will be the trophy knife that will be used like the Stanley Cup for our annual shooting contest at hunting camp. The handle still needs to be finished. It will be made from deer leg bones we found in the woods last year. Edge is 1095 center is wrought iron then a 10 layer stack of 1095/15n20 and a wrought iron spine. The blade is 5.75" with an overall of 9". I did have some problems with some of the welds only sticking halfway through. I on;y had my cousins for a day so I had to salvage whatever we worked on. I was able to take my arc welder to a few of the gaps and fill them in. This resulted in some "splatter" spots that you can see by the tang in the lower picture and one by the wrought iron seam on the first picture. The good news is it saved it and other than that there were no problems. It survived heat treat (edge quench just in case). Next up, the handle and hardware. I'm just waiting on my cousin to send me the cured bones for the handle. I guess I could start sketching out some ideas for that. For larger pictures click here.

I just had an awesome post all written up and I was putting images in and it disappeared. So, now you all get the shorthand version. I'm finally popping my cherry on damascus and multi-bar. I've been dying to do it and I figured I should stop being such a scaredy cat and put the hammer to the steel. I made my first forge weld earlier this summer (4th of July actually) by hammering a carbon bit into one of my axes. Then I did it to a few axes. Now, I'm back to knives. I've been really inspired by Petr Florianek's seaxes and I've been itching to to give one a go. Here's what I did: Bought some wrought iron from Orien M and stacked it up as a 1/4" core flanked by L6 saw blades and 1060 strip. Forge welded that into a billet, drew it out and folded it over for a 10 layer strip. I just wanted a cool stranded like core with some wrought texture so I stopped there. Some videos of me hammering. Quite boring actually unless you like this kind of thing... and I do. Fortunately for all of you my flipcam died after that and I didn't get any more video. However, that is me doing the first billet after I folded it. Feel free to critique technique. I make most of this up as I go along, especially since I have just my arms, hammer and anvil to make this happen. Next I drew that out a bit, fixed any apparent weld flaws and cut it into two bars (I have two builds I am using it for). One of these will be the core of this knife with a 1080 edge bar and a wrought iron spine. Which I stacked, welded the ends and lit it on fire! Here it is after the first hammer pass on the welds. Don't worry, I made sure to weld it a few times to make it solid. I had to make some modifications to my forge. I packed in a few more firebricks on the sides and bottom and closed off the back. Nice and hot in there. Done forging. Now some shaping and general grinding. You can start to see the pattern in the core. I plan on attempting the heat treating tonight. I like to do it at night when I can see the steel color better. I plan on doing an edge quench almost as deep as the edge bar. Given this is my first time, I'm not totally sure what I should do but after reading through a ton of the multi-bar posts I feel like this should work given the smaller size of this seax. I would love to hear opinions on the matter though if anyone has one. Oh, and here's what I was thinking for the handle and fittings should it survive the quench: Thanks for looking/reading! Larger pictures can be seen here: http://rashystreakers.tumblr.com/tagged/osberg%20seax