Primal/Tactical EDC

This one walked out of my shop today in the hands of an airman. I had not made a sheath yet and didn't have any pics, so I built a quick foldover Kydex sheath while he waited and snapped some pictures.

The blade is just under 5" long, forged from 3/4" round 5160 spring steel. Triple normalized, triple hardened in canola oil, triple tempered, shaving sharp; the usual. The tang runs the full length of the handle and is wrapped in paracord with a black underlay and desert tan overlay. The paracord is impregnated with Minwax Wood Hardener, essentially making a composite material in situ, and anchors through a hole drilled in the end of the tang. The underlay still has its core, while the overlay and the single-strand Turk's head knot have had the core stripped.





The sheath has a small MOLLE lock. The shiny spot on it is where I got it a smidge too warm with the heat gun.

First exposure of my work in a magazine

Not an article, but the April issue of Blade has a letter to the editor from me thanking them for their timely article in last June's issue about the Bowies at the Alamo. One of the Bowies pictured was the Caiaphas Ham Bowie on display in the Alamo's Long Barracks, which I had just been commissioned to make a reproduction of for a customer who wanted it not only for its historical value, but for the design's utility. As a bit of background, Ham was a friend of the Bowie brothers and was given the knife from Jim's brother Rezin, who was the knife nut of the family. From the caption on the display in the Long Barracks, it sounded to me like there's a good chance Rezin made the knife himself, though I don't remember what information there made me think that or know for sure that he did.

Although my shop is just a couple or so miles from the Alamo and I had studied and sketched the knife to the extent of my poor drawing ability, I wanted to get as close to the original profile as possible.

Armed with dimensions e-mailed to me by one of the head curators and the picture from the Blade article, I got as close to the original profile as I could. The original was forged from an old file, but this one was 5160. I used mesquite for the handle, appropriate for a knife made in Texas. :) I even offset the rivets in the handle as near as I could figure to the original.



Like the original, it has a tapered tang and a pinched-in spine.



Fortunately, the customer had better sense than to try to reproduce the original sheath, which was quite crude and seemed to be held together with *lead rivets*! Given the fact that my leatherworking skills would likely have made a sheath uglier than the original (I know where my skillsets lie, and it's not in the direction of leatherwork), the customer wisely commissioned knifemaker Luke Swenson, also living in the San Antonio area, to make a sheath for it.





Since getting the knife, the customer has put it through its paces, from cutting grass to patch a shelter roof to cooking to near-daily use in making kindling for his wood stove. In his words, "IT HOLDS A PHENOMENAL EDGE". That's what one likes to hear about one's work. :D I like making good using tools for folks what use them.

The magazine has just hit the stores and I haven't picked up a copy for myself (and other copies for my family) yet, but I've seen the page. They have a large picture of the knife plastered across the top of the page where you can't miss it. :) I've already seen a small increase in visitors to my website specifically because of it.

Large quasi-Nessmuk

I forged this out last week while contemplating and assessing what I needed to prioritize as far as working on projects. Kept my hands occupied and my mind calm and I got done what I needed. Made a little bit of money with it too, as it has sold.





Typical for me: 5160, forge finish, filed bevels, triple normalize, triple quench in veggie oil, triple temper. This is the first forged blade for me to use this particular type of cord wrap; the others using it were stock removal blades. There's a leather slab on either side under the wrap that runs the full length of the handle and it has a hole in it so that the cord wraps through the steel and the leather. Cotton two-strand Turk's head knot at the front, hemp cord for the rest of the wrap, sealed in shellac.

I forgot to take measurements, but it's a large blade. I'd say in the 7 inch range.

After-SERE-training report

The airman who ordered this knife completed his SERE training. With his permission, here's what he told me about using it:

"Ok, so im back from SERE school and it was rough. Learned alot though. My wife sent me the knife and out of the box i thought it was awsome. Sheath is very cool and functional. knife stays well with tension. The clips work very well on a web belt as well as MOLLE attachments on my vest. The knife itself is very beefy. I was not able to take pictures because alot of the training is classified and i was not able to bring a camera. I can say that the knife worked like a dream. We had many tasks during the training that involved a good knife. They issued us all bolt knives but i chose to use yours even though i still had to lug around the bolt knife as well. cutting tree bows down was very easy. I probobly cut down about 150 bows for shelters and camo. We also cut down alot of tree bolts for fires. we used large branches to beat the knife through the the tree bolts to have smaller pieces and the knife went through like butter. finished way faster than the guys with the bolt knifes. probobly went through about 20 bolts of wood. the tip worked real well for breaking down wood too. I also used the kinfe to start fires with a metal match and cut down alot of brush while evading. The knife worked like a dream and i had alot of guys ask where i got it so your cards went to good homes. Im sure you will get a few calls. This knife is definately staying in my helmet bag when i fly. Great knife. email me with any specific questions you have. Im still telling alot of people about it. [b]Oh and the knife is still as sharp as it was when i got it in the mail.[/b] Thanks again. "

I had to look up that a "bolt knife" is the USAF-issued survival knife, named that for it's bolt head-shaped pommel. I also hadn't heard the term "tree bolt", but he sent some pictures to show me.








Folks, I was surprised to see his comment about the blade being as sharp as when he got it after putting it through the kind of work he described. I was hoping it would serve him well, but this is by far the hardest use one of my little blades has seen and it performed better than I had expected. That's why I made that part bold. :D I'm pretty proud to have made a blade that would do that well.

I asked him about how the handle had been both in comfort and in durability. His response: "I really liked the handle wrap as well. It fit good in my hand even when i wore gloves. It was very cold so we wore nomex flight gloves as well as calf skin leather gloves. Very good grip. also the sheath worked very well and was very quiet with the knife in as well which was good because we had to do alot of evading."

A couple of pics he sent of it on his bag:





This is not the last primal/tactical knife I will be making. I have four in the works for active-duty military and hope to have more serving our armed forces in the future.

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.