In a sense, this knife was in the making for over twenty years. For more than twenty years I wanted to make a bowie of this size and more than twenty years ago I drew the picture of an eagle to adorn it. Initially, I intended to etch the picture on the blade but when I made the blade, I...
The last week I finished both sheaths and this time I did not need to make any new tools and everything went pretty much as it should. So today just a few pictures and some words.
I intend to decorate the sheaths for both knives with pictures of birds of prey, so today I will just write shortly about designs and sketches.
This week I got a commission to sharpen and repair some knives and one of them was interesting, and it inspired me to write short musings about sharpening angles, respectively about what angle is correct and when.
Whilst work on knives progressed very slowly these last few weeks, this week unfortunately I could not work on them at all. Only today I had a bit of time and strength, but it was not worth it to start doing something about knives too much. So I did a bit of work on the forge at least.
This week I did not do much, I am currently overwhelmed with other work and knives had to be put somewhat on a backburner. To glue the bigger knife took a bit longer than I expected – a lot of resin soaked into the wood so I had to fill the hollow twice. Thus it took four days instead of two....
Both knives are glued together and the handles are fully shaped. I sanded the surfaces to 400 grit and now I am in the process of applying the finishing layer of epoxy resin.
This week I have finally reached the gluing phase of the manufacturing process for both knives, although I was in part hindered by working with experimental materials. Resin stabilized conk is an interesting-looking material but it is hard and brittle. Before I figured out how to work with it, I destroyed several pieces. But that is the price for...
It looked like I would be able to do most of the work on the handle for the smaller knife but then I messed up and I had to correct a few mistakes before I got into a state where I could show something. But I can show you the process of making decorative screws/nuts for the end of the...
I finished all time-sensitive work and the weather should go bad now so hopefully, I will advance the work on the two bowie knives this week. In the meantime, I prepared the wood for handles and when I was at it, I experimented a little. If it goes bad, I will have to use different pieces of wood, but that is always the risk....
