I am still in a prolonged battle with my garden and my workshop, but it seems I am ever so slowly reaching a level of order that allows an actual work to be performed again. The whole workshop, the garden shed and essentially the whole garden were a huge mess whose cleaning took me the better part of my free time for, by now, a whole month. And I need to clean it up because I need to get to making knives pronto. I got my first commission.
I have sent the potential customer pictures of my past work and they chose a design, with a few requests for changes. It is, in fact, the sixth knife I have ever made and one that I am using personally until today – you can see it in the article “Knifesharpenophobia”. I think it is a good design for an all-purpose camping knife but also exactly because of that long time of me using this knife personally, I thought that the blade geometry can be improved, so I did exactly that – the blade is a tiny bit slimmer and the point is more centered and pointy than in the original.
I have drawn a sketch in photoshop, with two different wood variants. Then I made a pretty pdf and sent it to the potential customer to look at and, of course, a price list for the variants portrayed.
They chose and ordered a knife with stainless steel handguard and pommel, peened, full tang and a simple leather sheath. The grip from cherry wood, leather colored accordingly.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I hope to do it justice. This blade has somewhat complex geometry and it was not exactly easy to make it back when hand tools were all I had. Making it on a belt-grinder should be faster, but it also allows for easy mess-up. So I will probably start making two blades and if two knives come out of it, good. I need at least one top-notch blade. And if I get two blades out of it, the second one will be fitted differently and sold in an auction for the Richard Carrier defense fund.
As a result, of course, I do not expect to meet the manufacturing time that I used for price calculation – I have used the expected time after I get some more experience under my belt, and the offer alone took several hours to draft because I had no templates for calculating the prices or drawing the designs. But right now it is not about making enough money to live by, right now it is about getting more experience, getting better acquainted with my tools, optimizing my manufacturing processes and getting some satisfied customers. We’ll see what comes out of it.
Congratulations on your first order! i hope roduction goes smoothly and you end up with two good knives.
Good morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve commented. Just wanted to update the community on the memorial tree. We had a silver maple hybrid planted in Caine’s honor on the front lawn last week. I will send photos. It was a long winter for me. I hope to be around more often; I’m still a subscriber to FTB.
That’s a lovely knife Charly.
Yay for your first order. Can’t wait to see it finished
Raucus Indignation,
I was thinking about you just the other day. It’s good to hear from you. I’d love to see the memorial silver maple you planted for Caine.
Charly,
Congratulations on your first order. It’s a lovely design and I hope we’ll get to see a few photos of its creation.
Congratulations, Charly. A start is a start and the knife design looks stylish and practical. Is the bevel above the point sharp or a false edge?
So glad to hear you got your first order, Charly, I hope it goes well. I like the knife design a lot.
@Raucous Indignation, I am glad to hear from you again.
@Ice Swimmer, just false edge, almost, but not entirely, sharp, it is not beveled at steep enough angle to allow for meaningful cutting and since it is not meant to be a weapon, stabbing performance is not a priority.
Very cool, I wish you best of luck!