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Blade of the raft elves


Jziegenbein
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Since I dont know of many true myths to base a knife around, I decided to do a LOTR flavored knife :rolleyes:

In my head, this is something that was carried by one of the raft elves on their journeys from mirkwood to the long lake

The plan so far is for it to be made of 52100, wrought iron for the fittings, wenge for most of the handle with (ineptly)carved antler spacers and spacers of a high performance polymer my brother manufactures.

Without further ado:

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Thanks for lookin :D

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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Looks like you have a full head of steam! Clear the decks for action! Can't wait to see it all finished.

Troy Allen Christianson is NOT a "Licensed Bladesmith" so you may treat his posts with the contempt they deserve.

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Thanks you guys! and that's a great idea! maybe not from a wine barrel per se, but some oak

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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Time for an update.

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I profiled the blade somewhat on my weakling of a belt grinder and also straightened out any wobbles it had in the forge and normalized thrice

 

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Here I cut a slab of red oak (on my newly installed post vise :D) into overthick scales which i'll glue together and use for the wood portion of the handle, rather than the wenge

 

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The blade fortunately survived the triple quench in hot oil and an hour or so tempering at 400 degrees. It came out nice and springy, but still stiff

I also forged the tang a bit more before final normalizing to make it better tapered

 

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The blade is fully ground to 220grit on the belt sander, now for lots of elbow grease and sandpaper.

I also drew out a to scale sketch to go by

 

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Bringing the blade up to 220grit hand sanded

 

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And all the way up to 600grit, although not perfectly sanded yet since i'm sure it will be scratched a bit before i glue it to the handle.

 

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here I'm filing my shoulders a bit closer to square, I'm determined to get at least a decent fit on the guard

 

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an action shot of me etching in my logo, using only an xacto blade, drain cleaner, packing tape, and a 9volt battery

 

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horrible photography aside, the mark didnt turn out incredibly this time. my results with this method aren't always stellar

And that does it for the blade work ^_^

 

 

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the guard and pommel are marked out onto the wrought Iron. Now i need to fix my angle grinder so i can cut them out :blink:

 

 

 

once again, thanks for looking :D

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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after a few tedious hours with needle files and my drill press, I got everything fitted. The oak slabs are mortised to fit the tang, pinned together with short bits of brazing rod, and glued together

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a few minutes with the belt sander and staring into the light got rid of any gaps between the spacers

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And it's finally beginning to take shape! I've done a little more sanding down past this point, and am just about to etch the guard and pommel

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jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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a bit more work done on this.

 

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a nice cup of dilute FeCl with the Wrought Iron peices taking a bath

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a close up of the guard and pommel, etched about 30 minutes or so

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everything shaped and sanded to 600grit and etched

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guard and pommel taped off for gluing

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delicious epoxy

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and here it sits for the next day or so, pardon my messy worktable. :rolleyes:

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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finally hit something of a drawback on this one. It was only a matter of time <_<

 

I cleaned up the glue, trued up the shape of the back end, which had glued a little misaligned, and cut the end of the tang for peening.

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unfortunately, the epoxy hadn't flowed into the middle part of the handle very well, so during peening the handle jarred itself apart. I'm glad this happened, as it showed me a weakness earlier rather than latere

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So I applied a much more liberal coat to the inside of the wooden part and through the rest of the handle, and set it to cure again.

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This time it survived the peening process easily. The pommel had to be resanded and re-etched a bit.

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And a bit of a closeup on the peened tang

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Now I just have the simple task of carving the antler :rolleyes:

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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Thanks man! :D the concave pommel was a bit tricky when I was peening the tang, but I like the effect of it too

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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I finally finished the final touches, overall i'm very happy with how this turned out. My (atrocious) carving is a bit on the messy side, but i cleaned up the scratches as best I could. I don't know how the resident carving fiends can stand it. I about pulled out my beard it was that tedious :ph34r:

I'm especially pleased with the fit on the guard. This is the first time i can say i've gotten it fit with no gaps whatsoever. :)

The blade is just a hair under 6" long and the handle is 4 3/8", making the OAL 10 3/8"

But enough of my yammer, here's a few pictures of the finished product.

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once again, pardon the less than satisfactory pictures. I'm no photographer. Thanks for looking :D

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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You did a fine job with your knife. Let's just hope those elves don't have rubber rafts :lol:

Troy Allen Christianson is NOT a "Licensed Bladesmith" so you may treat his posts with the contempt they deserve.

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thanks guys! I've sure had fun with this KITH already, and the real fun hasn't even started yet! :lol:

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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had one of my buddies take some real pictures of this. they're quite a bit more crisp and detailed for some reason :rolleyes:

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Thanks for looking :)

jared Z.

 

lilzee on britishblades.

 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

-Sir Winston Churchill

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