What's on my Bench Today?

I'm digging that petty!!

 

Ohh...it's going to have bling lol...but hopefully classy bling .

A leather saya for a roughly 13" blade is about $70 or so complete...I'm sure it'll fit well within your budget if you'd like it. I can also pick up some navy leather dye so it'll go well with the handle if you like.

Or you could get a hold of Tom if you want a wood one?

 

I think leather could be cool. You ever use Sting Ray leather?

 

Awesome is the only thing that comes to mind.

 

Thanks Jim!!

Lance, I've worked with raw samegawa (basically stingray rawhide) for Japanese sword work...but never the tanned leather. I'm not sure how it would even stitch up with the nodes, and I know it wouldn't be as thick as the 6oz stuff I use. It's also invariably chrome tanned, so it would rot the blade if used for the main saya. It'd be a pretty saya though for sure...maybe I could just face the cow leather on either side.



It'd be a really cool contrast to the blue of the mammoth tooth for sure.

 

It can be done Chris, drop me a note, I'll tell ya what I did...

 

That's gorgeous Pierre!! Incoming PM .

 

Thanks Pierre, much appreciated. I'm looking forward to my SanMai Gyuto from you.

 

Hey there Cris, It's Paul (Lsubslimed) from youtube. Letting ya know I'm here and diggin this thread :cool1 So, about that san mai you mentioned the other day, can't wait ta see it! I'm sure I'll have questions and comments, but let me know if this isn't the thread for us to converse back and forth about such things in, I'm still a stranger to this forum lol.

~Paul

 

Hey Paul!! Either here, or via PM if the questions are off topic too far. This thread is all about discussion and sharing whatever is going on...so if/when I do the san mai (the steel is ordered!) I'm sure I'll share it here. I went with 304 and W2 for now, since it's less expensive. Later I'll do 416 and Hitachi Blue #2 (also ordered) lol.

 

Nothin since Thursday!? What's wrong with you?? lol Hey, I tried to figure out how to PM ya, but I couldn't...(figure out how, that is 2) I just wanted to show ya this thread: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...akers-shop-Phoenix-AZ?p=14689709#post14689709 A guy's selling everything in his shop and he lives in Pheonix, AZ. I noticed it was the same state and it made me thing of ya, figured maybe you'd be curious lol. Still waitin on that san mai man!

~Paul

 

Did someone just say san mai??? :cool1

 

I just saw this!! Unfortunately I don't have the cash right now, but there's a few pieces I'm going to ask him about anyhow. Thanks for looking out man .

On the PM thing...click my user name, a popup box comes up, and click to private message. Or, you can open the private messaging window and type my name in. Hope that helps.

Yes sir. Going to play around with 304 and W2 first...but I've got some blue #2 and 416 I can do as well down the road. I haven't done any forge welding in quite awhile though, and stainless to carbon isn't amateur stuff...so I'm sure there will be a learning curve. I considered just ordering some from Randy...but considering that the total cost in materials (even for the blue #2/416ss) for four or five gyuto is less than $100...I can't justify a couple hundred dollars for enough to maybe get one gyuto out of it. I understand completely that the main cost is in the labor (it's the same for the actual finished knives in general!)...but I have two arms that work just fine lol. I do NOT have hundreds of extra dollars floating around to spend on materials .

I also like that doing it myself preserves the sole authorship of my work.

Anyhow, here's a couple of videos from my Instagram last night .

300 suji - https://instagram.com/p/1r-OjwGOgd
280 suji - https://instagram.com/p/1r7zJDGOuY
270 gyuto-hiki - https://instagram.com/p/1sJJfvGOrB
150 petty - https://instagram.com/p/1sJqftmOrn

All the blades are at a clean 220 grit horizontal polish. I'm forging blanks this afternoon, but hope to get them to at least 1000 horizontal by tonight, and if I get that far I'll probably just stay up and finish the polish on them all lol. All of them but the 270 gyuto-hiki are spoken for. That one will be $950 shipped in the US, and will of course include a standard wa handle. Leather saya and handle upgrades (shape, materials, etc) would be extra.

 

Hey here's another heads up on something I know you've been waiting for. You may already be aware of this but just in case I wanted ta let ya know before it's all gone! Aldo just posted that he got in his W2 today. (Yeah, I'm on BF pretty often )... http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1282668-The-W-2-is-ready-to-go!

~Paul

 

Lol...I didn't even know this...but I ordered 5 bars of Aldo's W2 this morning .

Not cheap either...$40 a bar.

 

The little 210 has a nice, substantial feel to it that I'd like to keep. I left the nose a bit less aggressively sloped to maintain more forward weight. Kind of bull nosed (for me anyway) lol. As I said, I'd like to keep these together as a set with matched handles. Price for the pair is $1200 (you save $60 buying them together). Separately they are $525 and $735 respectively.

 

Annnndddd...more adventures in straightening lol.

This is a big gyuto...like 280 x 50 or so. This was also the 4th time I hardened it, and the edge was getting preeeeettty thin. Like, around 1mm thin.


This picture was before the last round of heat treating.

So, into clay it went, and back into the oven for a final attempt before I decided it REALLY didn't want to be a gyuto and would prefer to be a suji or something lol. Hardening went smoothly, but out of the quench it was waffled pretty good. Edge going one way, spine going the other...in waves.


Edge up and to the left.

Spine up.


After an hour at 400°F, and some time on the stump with the dead blow. Spine up.


Edge up, same round. Often correcting the spine corrects the edge. The edge is SO thin, that if the spine is bent the edge will react in weird ways. Smoothing the spine relaxes the kinks in the edge.


These are after a second round in the oven...pretty straight but for the bent tip.


And after a third round. It's currently sitting over bent in the vise to relax the tip some. I'll get some more pictures of it once it's ready to grind .

 

Thanks for sharing the process.

 

150mm petty with a new style handle .

 

And pretty much done! Just need to mark it, perma mount the handle, and give her an edge!