Primal/Tactical SERE knife

I was contacted by a flight engineer on an AC-130 gunship about a knife to carry with him. He's about to go do his SERE training and wanted a good knife to take, as well as just general usage. He gave me some general parameters of what he was looking for and a blade size, 7". I sent him a quick sketch:



He approved and I got busy. I started with 3/4" round 5160 and forged this:



I cleaned up the profile and it looked much more like the sketch, even though I didn't have to take off much steel. After cleanup grinding:



I soaked it in vinegar to eat the scale off the blade, filed the bevels, a triple hardened it in veggie oil:



After tempering three times and cleanup, I used a new style of cord wrap I've been working on. It uses an underlay and an overlay of contrasting parachute cord, the underlay intact to build up the size of the handle appropriately and the overlay stipped of its core cords to lay flatter. The inspiration for this style of wrap came from a Mongol saber I saw recently in a museum exhibit on Ghengis Khan. I looked at it closely and fixed in my mind how it looked, then played around with paracrod until I figured it out. Fairly simple, really. After each layer is wrapped, it is sealed in cyanoacrylate (superglue), which wicks down into the fibers and hardens, forming a solid composite material in place.

In this case, the underlay is olive drab and the overlay is desert tan. After that, a Kydex sheath with a pair of MOLLE clips, sharpening, and it's in the mail on its way to him.







The spine on this is 1/4" thick, yet because it's forged into one long bevel (essentially a full flat grind, though it's forged and not ground), it still has a bevel angle that cuts well.

I'm looking forward to hearing how this knife does with the SERE training. Several more in this basic style are in the works for some Marines. :)

The Wasteland Crow Project: Barong and Symbiote

Noah has worked his magic with horse hide, and another Wasteland Crow Project has been delivered to a satisfied customer. They are destined to be put to work to slay some brush, which satisfies me.

A heavy-duty snap on the belt loop of the symbiote blade's sheath allows it to be securely fastened onto the main scabbard or detached and worn seperately on the owner's belt. In addition, the main scabbard can be worn on a belt or on a shoulder baldric. Carry options are nice!







I thought it was cool how this in-progress shot of the back of the main scabbard looked like a face on a totem or a Viking artifact.



Check out other pictures of the leather being worked on at the Wasteland Crow Project blog: The Wasteland Crow Project

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! There is a lot of neat stuff upcoming in 2012 here at Helm Enterprises, Forging Division. I'm working on some of it right now. :)

Also, at the time of writing this I am only 15 views short of having 30,000 page views. Wow! Thanks to everyone out there checking out my work, from down the street in San Antonio to across the world in Hong Kong. I'll be putting up a lot more work as I go!

May 2012 be a blessed year for you.

The Ridiculously Large Bowie

Some time back, Max, the Marine who visited my shop on the return leg to L.A. on his cross-country van trip, saw a Bowie I had forged out earlier that week on a whim. I had a piece of 1 1/2" x 1/4" 1084 bar stock and I wanted to make a wide blade out of it. The Ridiculously Large Bowie was born.

Before he left, Max wrote a check for the Ridiculously Large Bowie. I mailed it to him last week. Its final dimensions ended up being 14 1/4" overall with a blade 8 1/2" long by 2 1/4" wide. The spine was still between 3/16" and 1/4", so I could have pulled it out even wider if I had wanted. In spite of its large size, it is surprisingly quick and not particularly heavy.

Here's the RLB as Max saw it:



Next to the more normal-sized Bowie I forged along with Max as a demonstration of how to make his own:



The demonstration Bowie, by way of comparison, has a blade 1 3/4" wide.

And as it arrived to Max, with shellac-sealed hemp main wrap, three-strand and two-strand Turk's head knots in cotton, and a shaving sharp edge:





In comparison with an EDC-sized knife with about a 4" blade:





Max was quite pleased to have it arrive and described it as "lovely" with a Marine-grade adjective in front of that. :) I've already had a request to make another one from another customer. :D

Here's the Bowie Max made on his visit:



And him enjoying his Bowie and a cigar in my shop:

San Antonio Gun Show

Tobin Nieto and I will be sharing a table at the San Antonio Gun Show this weekend at the Exposition Hall in the Freeman Coliseum. If you are going to be in San Antonio, come by and see us.

Details on the show are here: San Antonio Gun Show

Dha dah dao: Neo-tribal bush sword daisho

This should be playing in the background:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuB6xTi8UXU

This is a pair of dha that I made a little while back. They are based on southeast Asian dha, which have a vaguely similar profile to katana, though with very different construction.



Both of these have integral socket handles, which are not traditional on dha (nothing I do is traditional, really). Handles are wrapped in hemp, with cotton cord Turk's head knots, sealed in black shellac. Both of them have spines averaging 1/8" thick.

The big one has an overall length of 27 5/8", a blade length of 19", a three-strand Turk's head knot at the blade end of the handle and a two-strand at the butt end.



The little one has an overall length of 19 3/8", a blade length of 12 3/4", and two-strand Turk's head knots fore and aft.



These two are quite fun. I'm really pleased with them. Here's Tobin Nieto, with whom I share a table at the local monthly gun show, doing his best Chinese demon impersonations with them. :D

Primal utility

I had a fellow stop by my table at the last gun show who liked a couple of knives I had for sale, but wanted something between the two. I wrote down the details of what he wanted and his contact information and told him I'd get started on it Monday. A couple of weeks later, he picked it up, quite pleased with the outcome.

Approximately 4" blade forged from 3/4" round 5160 bar, triple normalized, filed primary bevel, triple quenched, triple tempered, hemp cord main wrap, cotton cord two strand Turk's head knot, amber shellac sealer, shaving sharp.