Making my huntin' buddie's knife
 

My huntin' buddy needs a proper knife so I decided to whip one up for him.

Got a set of Amboyna burl scales and a blade of decent enough quality to keep for a while.

Attachment 14957

steel is 1095 and 15N20 at 58-59RC
Attachment 14958

More as the project develops.

Can someone photochop the grip onto the knife for me. I wanna see what it'll look like. Maybe need to add a brass pommel if it's going to look half done.

Oh... if you want one, that'll be 500 bucks please.

wtf 500 bucks ._. I'll just keep my kershaw

The wood for the handles costs as much as an average kershaw folder. The blade steel was about double the average kershaw folder. There's also all the work that goes into it and the hand made leather sheath.

I'll see if I can remember to take a pic of my huntin' knife. Planer blade steel, deer antler handle, brass guard, delrin spacer and a hand made sheath.

I'll have some more antlers here in about..14 days or so :)

solid month for me. Where you hunting this year? I'm gunna be up be b zone (b1-b2)

D8 Zone

Dove season wasn't too bad here, considering the places to hunt are dropping ...

You can come up to B zone with me this year. Good hunting.

I could get a second tag. Unfortunately, I'm not really financially sound at the moment to do any sort of travelling.

Thank God my dad wanted someone to pack with and helped me out getting a pack and helping me gear.

Last year around this time I couldn't go with him, it was his first year packing in, he pulled out a nice 4point. (8 point to others folks depending on your region)

And since I had school, he went scouting, found another nice buck in the same spot as he did last year. Went to track it earlier this week, its still there.

Maybe next season I'll have money and be able to drive up there and go, that'd be kickass.

Here's some pics along the way. We're shooting for a sort of executive look with a little rustic roughness to it. Something made of fine materials but intended for rough use sort of thing. I've stripped the old finish and have been rubbing linseed oil into the wood. It's a tedious process but it looks more incredible with each application.

Got the parts
Attachment 14946

Scales cut (custom fit to my buddies hand) and given a quick first coat of LO.
Attachment 14947

Finished assembly. Used 2 part epoxy and a soft jaw vice to bond the scales to the blade. Don't want any rivets getting in the way of seeing this awesome wood.
Attachment 14948

And one more pic for feces and laughs:
Attachment 14949

That blade looks wild with all the squiggles.. means good metal from what I know about knives(I know they can cut stuff)

the blade is damascus steel. It's 11 layers of alternating steels (1095 and 15N20) that were forge welded together into an ingot, then folded about a dozen times. If you just do that much with the steel though you won't see that neato pattern. That only comes out with acid etching.

There is another more ancient type of damacus steel called wootz but 1, that technology was lost after the fall of the roman empire and 2, meteoritic iron was also used and 3, there was never any 1 single method of making wootz but it all involved crucible melting which homogenizes the steel and eliminates any possibility of getting the pattern to show up in the blade. A 3rd technique was the cable forging system which turned out a resulting visible pattern similar to damascus without the acid etching process but also netted very inconsistent steels with an excess of carbon that's unevenly distributed and normally very fragile segments are next to very ductile segments making for possibly the worst edge holding characteristics on the planet. The Japanese used the last major style of multi-steel edges, they used a soft very low carbon steel for the bulk of their blades and then forge welded in a strip of super super super hard high carbon steel which acts as the blade edge. This method is really laminated steel rather than a damascus or pattern welded or forge welded or wootz.

Advantages of a true damascus steel (not much of what's out there is real, most is just a pattern put on an otherwise homogenous steel blade blank) are that all the carbides run in long strips and make thousands of layers which act like nano scale saw teeth. The damascus blades can be harder to sharpen but if made from proper steels will hold and edge very well and they look amazing.

Price drop, if you want me to make you a custom knife like the one above, it's 300 bucks. That's the cost of materials plus 50 bucks for my labor and a few bucks for shipping. You can't touch a custom knife with this quality of materials and workmanship for less than 500. Hand rubbed linseed oil finishes require a few weeks to 3 months. Unfinished handles are not an option.

I use Amboyna burl of exhibition grade and hand made 1095+15N20 blades. I can use 52100 blade steel if you like but it won't have the damascus look...it's ball bearing steel.

Awesome looking knife, I am sure 300 dollars would be more than worth it.

Is this one done above?

still working the finish but other than that, yeah it's pretty well finished. It's got a bit of a deliberate rough almost colonial look to it but that's how my buddy wanted it and how I wanted to make it. Hard to pull off.

hand rubbing linseed oil takes several days. I just finished putting another coat down. I'll hit it with 000 steel wool again tonight and then give it another coat. 5-10 more after that and it'll be complete.

Very simple indeed. I like my knives simple, but not THAT simple. Then again i only carry folding/pocket knives. Definatly need a new one though..

One of the knives I've had that I like the most was just a hunk of metal and string. Boye Knives (this is just like mine, the cobalt basic 3), you'll have a hard time finding anything like em. So sharp and hard that the sheath has to have a brass liner. Some asshat stole it. I know who. He'll get his reward someday.

http://boyeknives.com/images/basic3_overocean.jpg

Dam, and i thought my Gerber folding knife was the chit. I gotta Smith and Wesson double folding knife too, but nothing on par with that. I'd be proud to have one of those. Just to carry around and not for use.. Unless I needed to stab a robber or something.. :cool:

my Sunday, go to church knife

and my work knife:

Finished the finish last night. Well... as far as scooter wanted to go with it. I think we could have made that fucker glow in the dark but he wanted to keep a little rustic look so I only went down to 000 steel wool and then about an hour on a bare cotton wheel.

I'll get pics up as soon as I can of the finished product. The wood turned out fantastic. The figure and swirl in the wood with the linseed finish has a real 3d look to it, almost a marbled plastic look but then you can see the grain of the wood and it throws your eyes for a loop.

So who's gunna let me make them my improved model? It requires that you want to blow about 300 bucks on a knife.