What's on my Bench Today?

Had lunch today at a good friend's restaurant...I always bring whatever projects I have on hand for him to look at, lol:

 

at least you didn't have to get up for 6 am... someone was 25 minutes late for work this morning

 

Hey!...I warned you I can talk knives for hours!

Wait...maybe I didn't, lol.

 

lol I had a choice at 116 in the morning, check message... or leave it till morning. although I probably learned more in 2 hours on the phone then my whole time here... Shane most of it was about swords lol

 

Haha! Glad you got something from it all man, lol. Most of what we talked about applies here too though. Geometry and metallurgy are pretty universal. I temper my sword blades to roughly 63HRC on the edge with W2 (only slightly less than my knives)...and no chipping yet!!

As a matter of fact...I was playing with my katana in my shop today (talking to you reminded me it'd been too long since I pulled it out lol) and this just sorta happened :



Too much fun lol.

 

you were the kids other moms kids didn't want their kids playing with weren't you... and I'm sure the wives of adult kids don't want their hubbys playing with you lol

 

Haha! Something like that, lol.

 

Just for you buckeye burl lovers out there lol. I'd made a video for a customer yesterday who was wanting buckeye burl, and I basically just spritzed the rough wood down with some water to give him an idea. Water it seems, shows the color very, very well. It doesn't however, show the figure at all. He settled on a piece so I spent about 2 minutes on the grinder with a 500 grit belt, and another 30 seconds on the buffer to see what the actual figure looked like. The difference was of course night and day. Sooooooo I spent the next hour and a half finishing out all of my buckeye burl lol, so he could look again.


This is the second video lol. Obviously I'm talking to the customer, but I thought you guys might like to see the difference in the wood first, but also it's a quick way to share what pieces of buckeye burl I have for potential customers along with customers who are already on my list.

Thanks!

 

Holy Moly! Whatcha got goin on over there to the left huh? lol Would love ta see some pics of those!

And WOW man, that handle is gorgeous! It's mesmorizing, even just over your camera without being able to fully see the chatoyance it must have in person. Great job on that! I am deffinitely a fan of the taper it has, to my eye it just makes it more "streamline". Man that is insane that it ate up 6 or your 36 grit cubitron II belts (typo? or are there cubitron III now?) That's over $60 in and of itself in just belts.. not to mention however many belts of the different grits it ate up. I wonder what other makers who use mammoth teeth often use to do most of the shaping?

A tanto with wrought fighting would be sweet! :cool1 I always have to look up most japanese sword terms, and the ones I am familiar with, I end up getting mixed up lol. So does "hira" just mean (in western terms).... "A full flat grind as opposed to the 'saber-ish' type grind with the shinogi?" ..butchered.. lol.

Do you have any pics or anything of your ko wak? And is that finished up with fittings and shira-saya? Just curious ... as usual

BTW, your photoshop rendering skills are pretty badass brother! ... soo many more comments and Q's.. so little time... sigh.. 2lol

keep 'em commin!

~Paul

 

To the left of what, lol?

Thanks man!! 6 Cubitron III (not II ) belts was only up to that point. Total it killed 11, and started on another too lol. It would cut beautifully for about 30 seconds (not continuous) then all cutting would stop and if I didn't catch it the tooth would start to burn. Understand...I have a platen chiller pumping ice water through my platen as well...so it wasn't being overheated. It was purely a matter of the belts being dulled and creating surface friction. Oddly, once the handle was shaped, I went from 36 grit to 500 grit, and the issue went away completely. I think its because I was then just polishing, rather than removing mass material. My 2yr old 1200 grit belt didn't have any issue at all lol.

Pretty much yep, but not 'flat' at all. Hira have no shinogi...just pure convex from edge to spine.

One of the first pictures I posted in this thread is my ko-wakizashi. If you mean the ko-katana I cut the end of my poloshing station off with lol, I only have one picture on my phone...and its not a very good one lol.



Clean cut on the 2x4 though!

Thanks man! That's the plan!

 

lol, to the left in your picture that I attached at the very top of my reply... "attachment 6199" It looks like there are at least 3 of your sweet edc blades piled up there with possibly some kiridashi?

And where the heck do ya get cubitron II from? lol I'd tried to google it when I read your post but I didn't see any results from it (which is why I thought it was a typo). I pretty much get all my belts from Pop's Knife Supply and I didnt see any there either.. maybe from Tru-grit? Do ya know what is new/different in the IIIs vrs IIs and do they cost more?

haha, yea I saw that pic of your katana and I figured that was your sanding support, woops! Good thing it's only a plain 2x4 right? I seem to remember a vid on either your old YT channel or your current one regarding the katana? Did you ever get around to any of the fittings on either of them? And I'll have to go back and look at the wak. :like

~Paul

 

Lol...they're II's. My brain's been backwards for three days now lol.

And yes, 4 edc's, 2 kiridashi .

I'll be working on fittings next week. Got some new wrought stock which should make beautiful fittings .

 

Soooo! My buckeye burl video. The purpose was to give the customer all of his options from my available stock. He quickly picked #5 from the most recent video. I was thrilled...it's one of the more beautiful pieces...with lots of rust color...and I've been itching to try a live edge kitchen knife handle since I made Son's folder waaaay back. Dave's recent Forgecraft rebuild, with Mikey's amazing handle had pushed me over the edge lol.

Sooooo...I split the block...and sure enough...


The good side...


The not so good side...

Sure enough, there's a huge void in the middle of my gorgeous live edge blank!!

Hmm...

Sometimes I guess I'm just too stupid stubborn to quit. So, I drilled it out, sleeved the dowel hole with .7mm thick copper sheet to keep the glue from squeezing out the left side cracks...and glued it up with the nastiest wrought iron in my fittings bin, lol.




What do you guys say...think it'll finish out lol?

 

if there is a 1 in 100 chance, that looks worth trying

 

I think 1 in 100 about covers it...lol.

Sooo...I'll work on Dinsdale's saya to keep me occupied till it can be worked with

 

Maybe it goes on the Fujiwara?

 

Well, the handle is 95% done lol...but before I show you all, I want you to see exactly why I wanted to save it so badly.


While it was gluing up, I rubbed it down with a bit of tru-oil so you could see the colors. This is honestly one of the most beautiful pieces of buckeye burl I've ever seen. It was just SO riddled with holes and the live edge was huge...that I decided the only way to save it was to make the "issues" the focal point of the handle...


I think it turned out alright . I still need to oil the handle, and etch the wrought. I picked the nastiest piece I had for this one...then forged it to shape cold so it would split and crack lol. Hopefully that character comes out in the etch. We shall see!!

For those of you who'd like to see it with the 270 gyuto-hiki it's going on, I made a short Instagram video you can see here:

https://instagram.com/p/2-vcCtGOsp

But...do you know what the best part is??



I've got two more pieces that are the same color .

 

whoa that last piece looks pretty cool as well.

 

Very cool looking handle!

 

Thanks!!

Here's the saya I just did for it tonight:



In hand it looks even better! I'll be doing some quality pictures of this knife here around Monday I think (depends how quickly I get the polish finished!), which should show off both the handle and the saya better.