Blade Show and New Shop

Hello, everyone! It's been a while since I've updated, but it's been a fairly busy time in the interim. Unfortunately not busy making blades, but getting things ready to be able to again...

First off, the Blade Show was an absolute blast. I didn't get to see anything like all of it, but I saw a lot and met a number of folks whose work I've admired online for years. I stuck pretty close to my table and didn't walk around with my camera, so my pictures of the event are very limited, unfortunately. The room was vast and it was full of all kinds of bladed goodness.

Here's what my table looked like right after getting everything laid out. From one side:

From the other:

One slice at a time:

As you can see, it was quite full! Fortunately, it was less full by the time I headed back to Texas.

A couple of guys I met of whom I did get pictures were Joe Flowers and Reuben Bolieu, two fine fellows who write articles for Tactical Knives magazine as well as other publications.

Both Joe and Reuben walked away with a little something from my table, featuring leather by knifemaker Luke Swenson (www.swensonknives.com) who stands on Reuben's right in this picture. More about those little somethings later. Luke also generously transported my blades to and from the show since he drove there with his wife, making life much easier on me.

One of the coolest stories from the Blade Show for me was that both Reuben and Joe each left a little something for me. Some months back, Reuben had an article about blades from Thailand published in Tactical Knives. I really liked the blade profile of a 15" brush chopper that was featured in the article, so I forged my own version with an integral socket handle. I worked with the magazine open to the page with the blade, and even used math to figure out the proportions of the clip on the blade. I met Joe on the first day of the show, then a couple of hours later Reuben. Reuben said, "I have something for you", reached into his backpack, and pulled out the blade from the article! You can see how close I managed to get the proportions of the clip to the original.

The next day, Joe came back by my table and said, "I have something for you." :) It was a tooled leather machete scabbard from El Salvador, and it perfectly fit my blade from Thailand! I just realized that I haven't gotten a picture yet of the scabbard with the machete, but I will. In the meantime, Joe just put up a video on Youtube showing the scabbards being made:



Since getting back to Texas, I haven't been able to get much work on knives done because I have been moving into a new shop. It's almost exactly a 30 minute drive from my old shop north of downtown San Antonio, but it's out in the country south of the city, a few miles away from the community of Elmendorf and the town of Floresville. The shop is being finished up and although I don't yet have power to run my power hammer and hydraulic press, those will hopefully be up before too much longer and I can get back to pounding steel.

There is also a large apartment on the same property that is getting renovated in preparation for me to live there. Since I grew up in the country, I'm looking forward to once again being out amongst the coyotes and copperheads! :)

The shop is built largely from salvaged materials. It is being added onto the side of a railroad line shack that was built in the late 1800s, which will provide storage area for my materials. The actual shop space is smaller than my old shop, but the storage will balance that out to a large degree.

Three large doors will provide plenty of airflow, essential to running a blacksmith shop in Texas. As you can see, there is still quite a bit of re-arranging and organizing to do, but everything is in the shop.

My new landlord and his helper cutting corrugated steel for the west door.

The shop is far enough along that I can start to do some small cold work, and I will be out there tomorow doing just that. More neat stuff will be coming along as the shop gets back rolling.

In the meantime, I need to update my "Available Work" with the knives that didn't go home with anyone from from the Blade Show. :)

Primal/tactical warfighter knives

These are the last of my inventory for the Blade Show.

I'm not particularly good at naming every blade or style of knife that I make. Some knifemakers can come up with a new name for each one. "Gutripp Skullcrusher". "Asmodeous's Revenge". "Brothers of Aggression". :D So a lot of times when discussing design with a customer, I end up refering back to a previous blade by describing, "That one I made for the airman to take on his SERE training (http://helmforge.blogspot.com/2012/01/primaltactical-sere-knife.html)" or, "Those three I made for the Marines (http://helmforge.blogspot.com/2012/03/three-knives-for-u-s-marines.html)". So I decided that when referring to a knife intended for use by military personnel, particularly one based off of the SERE knife, I wanted a specific name. Calling them "soldier knives" would not please non-Army service members, though that tends to be a civvy generic term for military personnel. I talked about it a bit with some military customers and members of various forums and decided that "warfighter" covered what I wanted to say.

So these are warfighter knives, intended for use by folks going into harm's way in service of their countrymen. Most of these are based on the airman's SERE knife, though there is one little dude that is a tad different and a bigger one that started out with the intention of the same profile as the others but began pointing elsewhere. I decided to let it go where it would and am pleased with the result.



They were all forged from 3/4" round 5160, given my typical triple normalization, triple hardening, triple tempering heat treatment cycle I use on that alloy, wrapped in various combinations of black, desert tan, and coyote brown paracord with two-strand Turk's head knots that was then impregnated with Minwax Wood Hardner, and sharpened to shaving sharp. Most have a blade length approximately 7" long and an overall length around 12". The little dude has a blade length of 4 3/4" and an overall length of 9 3/8".



All have Kydex sheaths that match the color of the paracord on the knife's overlay. All but the little dude have two MOLLE locks, while it has a single.

This picture shows the typical profile on the left (this particular one has already sold), the little dude, and the oddball up closer. I realize that the profile of the oddball is a bit hard to see in detail, so I'll see if I can get a better picture tomorrow before packing it away.



Got a little more to do getting ready, but most of my preparations for Blade are done! Yay!

Zombie Outbreak Response Blades: Brothers of Aggression and Zombie Killer Bush Sword

More for the Blade Show. :)

Aggression's younger brothers will join their elder sibling. They both have recurves, which was not present in Aggression, and each has a different tip and end of the handle wrap. All have fully sharpened top clips that will shave hair, all are forged from Aldo's 1084, all are wrapped in Minwax Wood Hardener-impregnated paracord with a three-strand Turk's head knot.





The one with the neon lime green wrap has a blade length of 12 7/8" and an overall length of 19 1/2". The one with the bronze colored wrap has a blade length of 13 3/8" and an overall length of 19 1/2", with the butt of the handle left exposed for cracking the skull of a shambler if need be.

Also for undead decapitation duty will be this zombie killer bush sword forged in 5160, with an integral socket handle wrapped in retina-searing neon orange paracord and two-strand black Turk's head knots fore and aft. Although its clip is a false edge, it makes up for it with a longer reach with a 15 1/2" blade and 22 1/2" overall length. The blade profile is based on a blade from Thailand that was in an article by Reuben Bolieu in Tactical Knives magazine some months back.



And the whole family together, ready to serve at the first sign of an outbreak. :)

Dha, willow leaf, jungle chopper, and bush cleaver

More work to go to Atlanta: bush swords!

These are all forged from 5160 spring steel and given the triple normalization, triple hardening, triple tempering heat treatment I use for that alloy. All have integral socket handles, hemp cord wraps, cotton cord two-strand Turk's head knots on each end of the handle, and shellac sealer, with either natural amber or black. All shave hair. :)

The handles are oval in cross section and are aligned with with blade. Some are straight, some are curved to drop the chopping sweet spot below the level of the knuckles.

The dha is based off of blades from Thailand and Burma. Its blade length is 15 1/4" and its overall length is 21 1/2".

The willow leaf is more Chinese in design. Its blade is 15 1/8" long and its overall length is 21 1/2". The top bevel is unsharpened.

The jungle chopper is based on blunt-ended choppers found across Southeast Asia. Its blade length is 14 3/8" and its overall length is 20 1/2"

The cleaver is also based on Southeast Asian blades. As another knifemaker put it, "This thing wants to take off a leg!" :D It's particularly fun to shave off a swath of leg hair with it, knowing what that edge would do when chopping. It's a bit too short to really fall into the "bush sword" category with a blade length of 11" and an overall length of 17 3/8", but the construction is the same.

I have about half of the inventory for the Blade Show fully completed and will put up pictures as the rest of them get sharpened and sheaths made. I'm going to be a very busy boy!

Quasi-shinobi-zukuri o-tanto and tanto and upswept fighter

These got made a while back, but just this week got sheaths. All are forged from 3/4" round 5160 and given the usual triple normalized, triple hardened, triple tempered heat treatment I use on that alloy. All have paracord wraps with an underlay and an overlay with two strand Turk's head knots, all impregnated with Minwax Wood Hardener. They'll be making the trip to Atlanta next week.

The tanto and o-tanto are both my rendition of a shobu-zukuri style, with a pinched-in spine and no yokote. But I don't claim to be traditional in anything I do, especially making a forge-finished Japanese-style blade with a paracord handle, so I throw the quasi in there as well. :D If nothing else, there's a secondary bevel that true Japanese blades don't have. And a choil.

The tanto is overall 13" long with a 7 3/8" blade.

The o-tanto is 18 1/2" overall with a 12 1/2" blade. I gave it extra curvature prior to the hardening phase, and it straightened itself up to right where I hoped it would. What's weird is that I seem to get negative sori mostly on Japanese-style blades. It's like they know. :) Except I didn't get a noticeable amount on the tanto. They need some length to them for the negative sori to really show up.

The sheaths are Kydex with two MOLLE locks. I think of the color scheme for the paracord as "Kill Bill". :)

The upswept fighter has an overall length of 11 3/4" and a blade length of 6 3/8". Its paracord is black for the underlay and olive drab for the overlay. The sheath is a foldover design with a single MOLLE lock.

Primal belt knives

These are part of my Blade Show inventory. They are all forged from 1" x 3/16" 1084 plain high carbon steel, triple normalized, single quenched in canola oil, and triple tempered. The handles have a slab of leather on either side that runs the length of the tang, with a hole at the end so that the hemp wrapped over the top goes through both the steel and the leather. A three-strand Turk's head knot in black cotton cord tops off the wrap and it's all sealed in amber shellac.

The sheaths are made for me by Mike Casanova. The ones for the big blades are ambidextrous.

The little knives range from a blade length of 3 7/8" to 4 1/2" and overall length of 8 3/4" to 9 3/8".

The big knives range from a blade length of 6 1/4" to 6 3/4" and overall length of 11 1/4" to 11 3/4".

I have an ever-growing bald patch on my leg from getting everything sharpened up and ready for the show! :D

Xtreme Challenge Knife Mk II Update

I gave the Challenge knife my typical triple normalizing, triple hardening, triple tempering heat treatment that I use on 5160. Given the nature of some of the proposed tasks, I decided to hedge my bets and selectively temper the spine to a tougher spring temper.

To do this I used a trick I learned from Tim Lively: tempering tongs. I have a pair of tongs with 1" square bar welded to the jaws. I heat the jaws up, then use them as a heat reservoir as I pinch the spine of the blade and temper down the length of the blade, drawing the spine to a blue color and the edge to a straw. This method is how I heat treated all of my big blades before getting a kiln large enough to fit them in. Some folks do the same with a torch, but I find that the slower speed gives me more control, as well as letting the heat soak into the core of the blade and not just temper the outside.

I keep a soaking wet rag (one of my old gray T-shirts) handy to control the edge from getting too hot.

I'm getting a haircut tomorrow so I don't scare folks away from my table at the Blade Show next week!

I work my way from the base of the blade to the tip. The jaws have to be pretty hot for this to be effective, and I had to reheat the tongs three times. It takes longest at the base of the blade because you are bringing cold steel up to above 400 degrees. After that it goes relatively quickly.

I drew the very tip back to blue to make sure it didn't snap off under stress. Before that, I held the blade up and dropped it on the cement floor point-first. No damage to the tip.

At this point it's ready to sand down, wrap the handle, seal the cord, and sharpen.