This morning, Sam and I assessed the bar that he made, and came up with a plan for how to turn it into two knives – a larger and a smaller one.
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This morning, Sam and I assessed the bar that he made, and came up with a plan for how to turn it into two knives – a larger and a smaller one.
I’ve noticed and learned a few more things about teaching blade-smithing. Some of the tricks I just made up on the fly really work: for example, the trick with the plywood has turned out to be very handy.
Sam N, who you may have seen commenting here and there on FTB, has come out to the middle of noplace for a couple of days of slinging hot steel around. My posting schedule may be impacted, or it may not, I’m not sure.
kestrel mentioned that she’s learning how to graft plants and trees, and that her friend who is demonstrating the process misplaced their knife. Well, that’s sure to get my attention.
There are so many options with these things, that it’s hard to know which way to go.
After I got the resin blob out of the pressure chamber, I chucked it up on the lathe.
Once I had the blade in its final shape, and etched, I stopped sending images of what it looked like to its future owner. Opening a box with a new knife in it should be a surprise, and a small voyage of discovery. It’s especially a surprise if the person didn’t expect a knife and jams their hand into the box to see what’s inside; my sister finally forgave me for sending her an unexpected paring knife many moons ago.
Once the blade is annealed, it’s time to haul it out and shape it, or “profile” it as some knife-makers say. Every part in the process is really important, because each permanently affects the ones following. Sometimes you can go back and correct something, but only at the cost of winding the clock forward again afterward.
Please give me feedback if these are getting boring for you, and I can stop and spend my time complaining about the F-35, instead. I’m going to do a series of postings about a knife I recently delivered into the hands of its new person, which I am quite proud of.
I may have mentioned before that it’s really hard to drill a hole through composite steel, since (sometimes) the metal hardens from the heat of drilling through the layers. Thus, you get a ways into the piece and think “this is going well” and suddenly all activity ceases until you re-anneal the work.