Meat cleaver, bush dha, and Persian fighter

Some mid-sized blades finished up a while back.  All are 80CrV2 steel.

First up is a small meat cleaver commissioned by a customer.  He liked the looks of a cord-wrapped cleaver I had forged for the Blade Show and wanted one with a TeroTuf handle.  I liked the results well enough I traced it out to have a reference if I do future versions.  :)  It's about a 7" blade.

It was picked up at the Usual Suspects Network Gathering knife show, and I didn't get a chance to get good pics before traveling, but here are a couple of interesting shots of it.  The first is during thermal cycling, after forging and before stock removal.

And a picture from the customer himself, just prior to cutting up these ribs.  According to him, the cleaver "went through them like they weren't there".  :D

And speaking of cutting up critter parts, another customer had this pic of his drop point processing out rabbit along with an ESEE.

This bush dha was another casualty of having to get everything ready for the show.  These are the only pictures I managed to get.  It was originally intended to be a different blade shape, more of a bolo, but sometimes you have to work with the steel rather than boss it around.  It's about a 12" blade with a handle of hemp under paracord.

I did get an awesome shot of it with the infamous Ed Calderon, the Taco Ninja.  Got an interesting upcoming project with Ed.

And this 12"-bladed Persian fighter was originally planned to be on my table at the Blade Show, but ended up missing out because I was running out of time.  It went to the Gathering with me and came back where it was claimed once I posted it on Instagram.  The blade is about 12", and the top edge is unsharpened.  I'd consider this to be about as close to doing a fantasy piece as I do.

The customer requested a mild steel trainer to be predominantly used on his BOB training dummy.  That was a first to me, but I agreed.  I used 3/16" mild steel and trimmed out the shape on a bandsaw before cleaning up on my belt grinder.  The handles of both are hemp under paracord, and it took three tries to get the wrap to feel almost the same as the original.  Then I worked on getting the balance the same as the original.

The result was a trainer that's a bit lighter than the original, but due to having the same balance it feels very close to the same.