Double-edged meat cleaver, carcass splitter, short sword re-wrap, etc.

Some of the work that I've completed in the last few months that hasn't gotten posted yet:

This double-edged meat cleaver was built as close as possible to a sketch sent to me by the customer.  I'm pretty pleased (and so is he!) with how closely I was able to get to what he drew.  The blade is 13 1/2" of 5160 steel, the top edge is fully sharpened, the handle is marine epoxy-impregnated blue paracord over black over a foundation of neoprene. The butt is left exposed, and there are Turk's head knots fore and aft.

 

 

He also ordered up a Benghazi Warfighter with matching handle wrap.

 

 

 

 

An idea of scale:

 

 

Forged at the same time as the cleaver was this carcass splitter, with a single layer of black paracord over neoprene for the handle.  The blade is 17 1/2" long of 5160.

 

 

 

This was a short sword I forged a few years ago, inspired by Celtic and Chinese ancient swords.  It ended up being bought by my best customer, a Navy SEAL.  A few months ago he asked if he could send it back.  He loved it, but it just was not a practical blade to carry on the battlefield, so it had been on display, unused.  He wondered if I could re-sell the sword and put the money toward something he would actually strap to his gear when in the dangerous parts of the world.  I agreed, and put forth the offer to any interested buyer that I would re-wrap the handle with my improved methods in their colors of choice and build a new sheath, once again since my skills in that area have improved. It ended up getting spotted on Instagram by a customer who had seen it when I first made it and loved it then.  He jumped on the opportunity and laid claim.

 

 

His choice of colors was to keep the original black over retina-searing neon lime, but decided to make the three-strand Turk's head knot blue instead of black.  The handle doesn't look a lot different from what it did before, but it fits the hand much better than before.  The blade is 13 1/4" long, again 5160.

 

And the improved sheath molding is obvious.  The original black one was done by heating about 6" of Kydex at a time with a heat gun.  The new tan one was heated with a T-shirt press.  The T-shirt press is one of the best tooling investments I've made.  :)

  

 

 And less dramatic-looking but at least as special to me is this long Little Rok.  It was ordered by the soldier who ordered the first-ever Little Rok (along with Mightor, the big ol' Bowie that went it it) to carry in Afghanistan.  This one was commissioned as a gift for his father, the blade extended to current legal carry size in Texas, 5 1/2".  Wrap is tan over olive drab over neoprene.

 

 

He has built a leather sheath for it in addition to the Kydex one I made.

 

 

The original Mightor/Little Rok and two mini-prybar rig from 2013:

 

 

And a little video showing some of these blades and some others that I've already posted: