AG Russell show
August 15th 2008
Arkansas
Fiskmuk
Prototype
This one has fossil Mammoth ivory handle, blade and backspring are ladder pattern damascus with a 2 3/4 inch blade. The bolster and liners are 416 stainless as well as the pins. A old style slip joint with a postive half stop. This is my version of a folding hunter. This blade style has been proven over a couple of hundred years. It works well for everyday use as well. I will be engraving this one.
Folders are difficult for me to make. They take me much longer and are harder to do. I am improving so yall just bear with me.
#2 and final piece for the AG show a
Sendero
damascus, stag and engraving.
Arkansas Show 2008
#3
Bandolero
This is a 9 inch dog star patterned damascus bowie with ivory, framed handle with a mid ways side bar. Mountings are stainless and engraved with a row of very small beads on the guard {better than 200 of them suckers} on the ferrule is a double row of beads and the good luck running wheat pattern engraved and on the side bar scroll work engraved. Fossil Walrus handle.
I have not done the side bar construction in quite a few years and when I did I never engraved it. I got out of proper sinc of construction and it gave me fits. I know how to re-adjust next time. I really like this piece. It speaks to me. Course I could not hear it anymore at my age, but I am sure it speaks. It was either that or it was the cat. Been a long day people.
NLT #5 for 2006
Southwest Bowie
{progressive work photos, women do not let your husbands view unattended !}
This is a Southwest Bowie in damascus. I thought I would start putting the pictures of it up at different stages so you can see what it goes through. The pattern has been set at this point and is ground to 60 grit. The 9 1/4 inch damascus blade is made of 1070 and L6 steels. It has a "Tears of the Wounded" pattern. I plan on having a stag handle that is amber colored. I also plan on engraving the ferrule, butt cap and both faces of the guard as well as the outside of the guard. This ought to be really nice. Keep an eye on the photo updates. I think I will just leave the older photos up as I update with the new ones so you can see the progression of how I make a large knife.
Photo #2 This shows it as it is ground to 120 grit and in the file guide so I can set the shoulders where the guard will fit nicely. I still use a hand file. Many of the guys now use milling machines for this step but I prefer to do it the old way. It's my knife I can make it any way I want. Yes, this takes longer but to me it goes to being handmade. Notice in the picture the slightly hollow ground tang. This gives strength much like an I beam piece of steel. It is stronger than a flat bar of the same size. I end up with an irregular grind on the hollow, this again sets it up for the strength. I only do this on the larger pieces. On a hunter you will not get the precussion force or the leverage as on a large knife. I know many of the pieces that I produce may not be used but I can't take a chance. This may be the only knife I make that will be shown in a museum 500 years from now. I want it to be right. Besides that I want it to be something we can both be proud of. I look at all my knives the same way reguardless of its degree of embellishment.
Photo #3. It has been filed with a nice flat area where the guard will set plus it has a small raidus around it for strength. This is important. I have also ground the clip in. Hardly visable in this photo of the tang is a 1/8 inch hole that is countersunk on both sides, I do this on all of my knives. This allows me an internal rivet so to speak. I have put on handles of stag or wood then ground off one side all the way down to the tang and then you still have to beat the other side off. The bonding material gets into the countersink and hole in the tang and makes a rivet. Once, years ago at band camp, I took a hammer and started beating on a handle until I got it broke off; the bonding material still held onto both sides of the tang around the hole. So it is worth putting the hole in the tang. Y'all may not be rough on these pieces but I am so you can be if needed. This is why it is a good idea to always ask your maker if he has tested his handles. Does he know how much abuse a particular handle will take or is he just guessing. If there is an air bubble in the bonding material can he say where it will be? etc. All good and fair questions of a maker.
Photo #4. This shows what the handle and mountings will be made of. Notice the curve in the stag. The more a handle curves down the more power it has, the straighter the handle the more speed. This one will follow the basic curve of the blade as well as provide power. This is why the SouthWest Bowie is my favorite Bowie knife. The lines look so good and it only improves the function of the knife. The flat stock under the blade is 1/8 inch 400 series stainless and the stock on top of the tang is 1/4 inch thick. I will use the 1/8 th for the guard and butt cap with the 1/4" being set aside for the ferrule. The blade has been heat treated and double tempered at this point. Notice still no sign of the damascus pattern.
#5 Here I have routed, drilled, scraped and whined until I got all of the peth or core out of the stag. This is important that it all be removed. If you did not then when you put your bonding materials in to set the handle, the customer goes out and whups up on a tree or board then the bonding agent can start compacting the soft peth and the handle would eventually turn loose. I did this in the early years of my making so that I would know what would happen. I like to use stag with the smallest peth possible but sometimes like on this one the peth is quite large. That is no problem just take it out and move on.
#6. Here I have roughed up the fit on the guard and ferrule. They are slid onto the tang and ready to be press fit. A maker should never rely on solder to compensate for a poor fit of guard to tang. If a maker solders his guards, solder should only be used to seal moisture from the tang. I have silver brazed the bolt onto the butt cap piece at this point. The handle is ready to fit up once the press fit is done. I drill 2 1/16 inch pins in the front of the ferrule and into the stag. This way it can be taken off and fit back exact. This is important if you do engraving or file work on a piece. I use super glue to temporary hold the parts together until I get the locating pins established.
#7 Here I have the blade etched in the first picture. I use a 3 to 1 ratio of Ferric Cloride acid and rain water. Since the 15N20 has a nickle content it etches best in the ferric. In the lower picture I have the finished sanding done on the handle and the polishing complete on the mounting materials and handle. It is just slid and tapped together for the photo. If the knife was not to be engraved then we would nail it now. On hunting type knives I can engrave them when finished. On Bowie and Camp knives that have ferrules, butt caps etc. you have to do the embellishing after it is finished but before it is put together.
#8 The engraving. There is a lot of time between the #7 picture of the just finished knife and these pictures. When I do the engraving I hand draw with a basic pencil what I want. Then I go over that with a sharp scribe onto the work on top of the pencil lines. Then I cut the basic lines. This step is shown on the left hand picture which is the front of the guard. The right hand photo which is the back of the guard, shows where I started the relief part of the work. No shading yet. There is a full two days work between the picture on the left and doing all the work on the photo on the right. Once the basic relief work is done, then I take a flat graver and go around the scroll work to make sure it stands up sharp right at each edge of the pattern. When I do the relief work on the front of the guard, then I will start shading. Once the shading is done then I have to texture the background so that it holds the black lacquer that makes all of the engraved pattern stand out. I will update the work as it progresses. This part takes a long time to do so just bear with me on the updated photos. I stay hunched up over the engraving and sometimes I don't move but 1/4 inch in 10 or 15 minutes. Tough on the hands and back. However I like the results.
#9 Both of these pictures are of the front of the guard. The photo on the left is where I have relieved the background and used the square chisel to work the edges of the scroll. On the photo on the right hand side I did an out of step run so you can see what it will look like when it is finished. I completed the top part of the guard for this photo. I normally try to do all the shading work of something like this at one time, then move on to the next step etc. It will be about two days maybe a bit more before I finish the entire guard but I wanted y'all to get an idea of what the shading does to it as well as texturing the background. Lots of lines on that dang spider web too and all are cut on a curve. Once the two faces are engraved then I will do the edges with kind of a "Wheat Bud" pattern. The ferrule will have the good luck "Running Wheat" on it. The pommell should take 3-4 days when it is time to do it. By Saturday evening I should be able to start pencil drawing on the pommell. Oh yeah, on these photos. I know you can see the leaves ok. I am pretty sure you can see the Seahorse [I have already been told that it looks to someone like a "Duckhorse"], how easy is it to see the Toocan bird? Yeah, yeah, they are all leaves but sometimes in my scrolls I also combine to make other little things. There is also an old style "Weeping Heart". It is upside down using the negative spaces. Spot it yet?
When engraving, a straight leaf is easier to do than turning the top of a leaf. However, turning some of the tops gives it more defintion and makes it more life like. I also like tips or portions of my engraving to waller over into the border a bit because sometimes life is just like that. Life does not always stay within defined borders. Mom always did say I could never color inside the lines well. Guess she was right.
#10 The guard is finished. Back of guard on the left photo and the front of the guard is finished on the right hand photograph. Little bit of trash from my hands on both pictures so the engraving looks better than these photos do. This gives a rough idea of what it looks like. Rough.
#11 The ferrule. This has the good luck, "Running Wheat" engraved pattern. Where the wheats come together from different directions from the bottom there has to be a "meeting" or a ending. This is where I put an X in there. On the bottom of the ferrule is where I mark all NLT marked pieces. These knives are marked with the year and that number of knife for the given year. This one is marked NLT #5_2006. I just could not get the small ferrule in focus. I am not used to small things.
I worked on the guard and ferrule till late last night and was in the shop before 6:00am this morning so I could get them finished. I am taking a break right now and will go into the shop till late tonight. I am currently getting ready to engrave the main lines on the pommell. I should be able to post up Sunday
night the main lines cuts on the pommell. Then the really hard work will begin on it by following the same steps we did on the guard.
#12 This is a photo to give some idea what it will look like finished. I just tapped on the guard and did not worry about the fit up. I have smudges here and there on the blade and mountings but I was excited and wanted to give y'all a idea of what it would look like. Kinda like going on a blind date, ya just want a small peek first to see if you really want to go there or not. We have 2-3 more days before we can nail this thing together. I dont know about yall but I am just wore out working on this thing.
#13 I dont know about y'all but I am tired. I got up early this morning and cut the basic lines. Yesterday evening I had drawn what I wanted and then did the scribe work so that this morning I could just go to work on it. For the first time I have succeeded taking one scroll from the base of another scroll instead of just off the outside lines of the scroll itself. I was rather tickled with myself. I try to tickle myself every so often but we won't go there now. Going by the time we had working on the guard, it appears it takes me a day to draw and do the basic cuts, a day to do the background and a day to do the shading if all goes well which it does not often do around here. We will see. Then again it really depends upon what I am engraving too. I tried to tie several things together with the guard work. You have the same duck/dolphin/whatever heads, the spider web and some of the same shaped leaves. Though the guard and butt cap are seperate pieces it still needs to tie together just like the handle design has to tie in with the blade design or flow of the whole piece. I know this is not the best picture for focus but I will try and shoot better on the next shot. Since I will be doing the relief work on the butt cap, I guess you could call Monday Butt relief day. lol. Man, if y'all didn't think that was funny I may need to quit trying. At the end of this progressive thread I will give my musings on engraving and what it does with a knife and its value.
#14 This is what it looks like on Butt relief day around here. This gives you a bit better idea that just the basic lines. Been a long day around here. Making some of these nice projects is like giving birth. As you can see it has some of the same lines as the guard. Should look really nice together. I begin the shading tomorrow, Tuesday. If all goes well then I will be through engraving tomorrow evening.
#15 How's that for a butt..cap? Ok, you can scroll back and forth from the above two photos, or tomorrow I will try and put them side by side so you can see how much shading does for the engraving. Shading is so important and I am still learning a lot with a long way to go but I like a challenge. You can see here where some leaves are turned on the top and some are not. This adds better balance to the overall look in my opinion. Each piece I do I try to learn how to engrave better and this piece was no exception. I learned a great deal on it. I plan on really stretching my knowledge of engraving this summer.
I am too tired to muse much this evening over engraving and values. I will try and plan that for tomorrow night. During the day tomorrow I will set the bonding in the handle and nail this puppy together. Not sure how a full shot will turn out on it so I will have it shot by two different professional photographers. These two NLT pieces shown, #4 and #5 as well as the two I plan on having for the October show will be shown at the Art Gallery showing I have on schedule for November of this year. So whoever does end up with these pieces, I need to borrow them back please. I am trying to expose more people to collecting knives that really does not know anything about it. This Gallery showing will be good for all of us. Be sure and stay tuned tomorrow evening or anytime after that for your local musing station.
#16 The finished knife. My photo skills are not the best but hopefully you can get an idea of what the piece looks like. I tried to take a closer view of the handle so you can see the colors and how the engraving goes with the stag. This is one them turners. Ya just got to hold it and turn it around and round to see if you like it or not. Hope this is what y'all like. I will have it photographed by someone who knows what they are doing at the show. I feel like I have given birth to a litter of puppies when I get through working on one this complicated.
That will be it for the Blade Show this year.