Well, after a couple of crappy weeks of rain (with my still not-repaired roof leaking), and working a little OT to cover for my boss while he was out at
various meetings etc... (hey, maybe that'll cover the roof repairs!) I've finally finished the "kids' knife". Still have to figure out
what kind of sheath I want to do, then make it, but here's the knife:
After royally screwing up the "saw steel" I decided that whichever kid gets this should have something steel-wise that was also a little special, so I hammered the blade out of some 1080/15N20 random pattern damascus that I had made previously. I modified the design of the exposed blade only very slightly so it would be roughly the same size and shape as the other kids knives, only rounding the curve on the spine slightly, and making a ricasso area (kind of a thing that I do with most of my knives). The one really big change was switching the pattern from a full tang to a stick tang (also something that most of my knives have). Hopefully this result is a knife that still resembles the other kids' knives, but has definite elements of my style of knife making.
I had some lace redwood burl that I had sent out to be stabilized a few months ago that I really needed to test to see if I wanted to use this style of stabilization. It's still acrylic stabilized, but in a way that retains the "wood" characteristics, rather than converting it into a big wood-like chunk of plastic. I was really happy with how the wood turned out. Not quite as hard as the plastic-y stuff, but still extremely hard, and much nicer texture-wise. The finish is a poly/oil (Arm-R-Seal) in semi-gloss.
The guard is some shibuichi that I alloyed and cast directly in one of my graphite molds. It's 1:3 sterling silver : pure copper, and while it's kind of a fruity golden pink color right now, it'll oxidize to a really nice gunmetal grey if the kid lets it. The guard is in 2 parts with a black vulcanized fiber spacer. Also there's a spacer between the guard and the redwood burl handle.
Hopefully this'll make some kid's year, and be a good user to boot.
After royally screwing up the "saw steel" I decided that whichever kid gets this should have something steel-wise that was also a little special, so I hammered the blade out of some 1080/15N20 random pattern damascus that I had made previously. I modified the design of the exposed blade only very slightly so it would be roughly the same size and shape as the other kids knives, only rounding the curve on the spine slightly, and making a ricasso area (kind of a thing that I do with most of my knives). The one really big change was switching the pattern from a full tang to a stick tang (also something that most of my knives have). Hopefully this result is a knife that still resembles the other kids' knives, but has definite elements of my style of knife making.
I had some lace redwood burl that I had sent out to be stabilized a few months ago that I really needed to test to see if I wanted to use this style of stabilization. It's still acrylic stabilized, but in a way that retains the "wood" characteristics, rather than converting it into a big wood-like chunk of plastic. I was really happy with how the wood turned out. Not quite as hard as the plastic-y stuff, but still extremely hard, and much nicer texture-wise. The finish is a poly/oil (Arm-R-Seal) in semi-gloss.
The guard is some shibuichi that I alloyed and cast directly in one of my graphite molds. It's 1:3 sterling silver : pure copper, and while it's kind of a fruity golden pink color right now, it'll oxidize to a really nice gunmetal grey if the kid lets it. The guard is in 2 parts with a black vulcanized fiber spacer. Also there's a spacer between the guard and the redwood burl handle.
Hopefully this'll make some kid's year, and be a good user to boot.
Happier than any kid if I recieved that lol
