Project Badgermascus – Part 2 – More Failure

I want to stress up front, that none of these failures is Marcus’s fault.

So, what went wrong this time, I don’t hear you ask? Well, a lot, I am down one blade out of three.

I thought the pairing knife goes on really well, until 320 grit when I noticed a little perpendicular line on the spine. And It was not a line in the damascus pattern – those become visible during polishing, and that is very cool – it is a crack. I do not know when it happened. It might be there from the start, it might have happened when I was straightening the blade, it might have cracked due to the stresses involved during polishing – it is a very thin piece of steel after all. There are also some imperfect welds with inclusions in the piece, but this is not one of them, this is a crack.

Cracked spine. There is one more crack on the other side of the blade too. © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

No matter the cause, this blade is now irredeemable garbage, the only thing it could be reworked to is an awl,

I am going to finish the piece only as a show of what it could have been, but I am definitively not using any fancy materials for the handle. I planned on using stabilized maple burl (also a gift from Marcus), but now it will probably be just some random piece of birch or oak.

Works on the boot knife also did not go well. First I messed up the grind, bigly, but that was not the problem, that was still repairable, there was enough material that needed thinning out anyway. What was not repairable was the position of the cutting edge towards the blade’s tip. It turns out that I did not hit the 1095 at the center of the blank quite well. My grind was straigth, but the the 1095 in the center of the san mai damascus was bending ever so slightly to the left in this area. Had I positioned my grind just about 0.25 mm to the left, this would not have happened.

The darker cable damascus is reaching all the way to the cutting edge near the tip, where only the shiny 1095 should be.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I have tried to re-grind the blade, but for that, I had to make it about 1 cm shorter and I  do not think it looks as well as it did before, it is too short and stubby. It should become a usable little knife, but I am not happy with it, and I am not finished yet.

Next time I will work with san mai damascus, I will probably first polish and etch the edge to see exactly where the cutting steel is. Too bad I did not think of that before.

All in all, so far this project has made me nearly cry several times and to want to quit knife-making because I am no good at it. When one spends several days with some work only then for all that effort to be for nothing, it has quite an influence on one’s mood.

Operation: Dragon’s Breath

After my new forge lining has dried, I have coated the inside with about 5 mm of fireclay, nothing special about that. Then I have tested it and I was gravely disappointed – my puny little burner was not up to snuff and was unable to reach the 1050°C that I need. Funny, that, the inside volume should be about the same as in the previous model, where it did reach the temperature, albeit after a long time and with difficulty.

So I have decided to build a new burner and I am going to describe how. But this time first a disclaimer: This article is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not meant to be a set of how-to instructions and I do not encourage anyone to do what I have done here. Propane gas can be dangerous if not handled properly and if you decide to reproduce or imitate anything shown here, you do so at your own risk.

Nevermind that, there is a lot of articles and videos on the interweb how to build a forge burner, but it became pretty quickly clear to me that none of it is what I actually want. So I proceeded to build a prototype to test what works and what does not.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I wanted to retain the handle from my store-bought soldering burner, so I took the burner part off and I cobbled together some stuff instead of it from various plumbing parts. Luckily the burner is attached to the handle with standard 3/8″ thread (yes, piping in EU is the one exception where imperial units still prevail).

The prototype was working reasonably well, it reached a temperature of 1050°C that I need for hardening N690 easily and it heated up the whole inside volume of the forge fairly regularly. It is actually this burner that I have used to harden the Badgermascus this weekend. But due to its cobbled-together nature, figuring things out as I went along, the air-regulation did not work so well, I could not cut it off completely. So I have decided to take the information learned and build a completely new one. I went to the store once more and I bought new stuff, this time knowing what I am aiming for.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

From left top to right down:

Propane-grade PTFE sealing tape, 1x 3/4″ x 9″ nipple, the handle from my soldering burner, 2x 1″x2,5″ nipple, 2x 1″ to 3/4″ female/female reduction, 1x 3/8″ ball valve, 1x 1″ to 5/4″ female/male reduction, 1x 1″ brass plug (drilled already – was used in the prototype), 1x 3/8″ brass plug, 1x 3/8″ brass nipple, 2x 3/8″ brass nut, 1x 3/8″ brass ellbow, 1x 3/8″ 2″ brass extension and various sizes of  MIG-tips – 0.6, 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0 mm.

Unfortunately, all the steel piping was galvanized because that is the only type the local store was selling. That should not be a problem, because as you can be seen on the prototype, only the very end of the burner gets hot, the rest is pretty efficiently cooled by the flowing propane and air mixture. And I always work outside or near an open door. But I did not want to take any risks and I have decided to burn and brush off as much of the zinc as I could.

After that, I proceeded with the build. I started with the easy part – the brass fittings.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

As you can see, I have drilled holes into both brass plugs – in the 1″ a hole big enough for the brass nipple thread to come through, and in the smaller one an M6 hole for the MIG tip to screw into. All connections are sealed with the PTFE tape and I have tested them in water for any leaks (I had to redo two of them). The rest of the burner need not be sealed, but everything before the nozzle must be completely tight. The ball valve is there as emergency shut-off, the handle has a needle-valve for fine regulation and the brass nuts serve as counters to lock the elbow joint and the ball valve in place so they cannot change position.

The air-regulation was the most labor-intensive part. I have taken the male/female reduction and I have ground out almost all of the inner thread so that I can screw it backward over the short 1″ nipple. I have only left 2 turns of the thread left but I filed even that down a bit so it turns very easily. Then I have screwed the reduction on the nipple as far as it would go and I drilled four 4 mm pilot holes through both. Then I unscrewed them and I widened all the holes to 12 mm.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Here you can see the air regulation assembled in open position. I have added an M6 wing screw to be able to lock the reduction in place.

I did not take picture of the next step, but that consisted merely from screwing the two 1″ to 3/4″ reductions on both ends of the long 3/4″ nipple and onto the air-regulator and the air-regulator onto the big brass plug.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

To get better mixing of gasses and to slow the flow a bit I have crafted a small diffuser. That is just a piece of mild-steel with a mesh of holes drilled in it as depicted here. I have locked the diffuser in place at the flame end of the burner with a piece of cut-off thread.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

With this, the burner is de-facto functional, but it cannot be connected to the forge and it has a tendency for backfire, especially when the supply is quickly cut-off or reduced. To solve both of these problems I have intended to use the second 1″ nipple, but it has proven to be too short. So I took the 1″ pipe from the prototype, I cut it to the proper length and on the outer end, I have fixed inside fine steel mesh between two tightly-fitting pieces of pipe. Nothing fancy just pressed together.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

After that, I could assemble the whole thing and test it. In free air, the burner tended to blow the flame away at full setting still, but that could be eventually solved if I needed to (with another diffuser closer to the mesh).

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

However, I do not need to, because when inserted into the inlet of the forge, this is not a problem anymore. The flame creates a nice vortex, and unless I run really full monty, most of the fuel burns inside the forge.

Nice flame vortex © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

 

A chunk of steel at 1100°C © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

When fitted with 0.6 mm MIG-tip I can reach 1050°C easily, with the 1.0 mm tip I have reached 1100°C but not more. To get above that I guess I would need a forge with bigger inner volume to get better fuel combustion. 1100°C is still not quite enough for forging damascus, although it is ample for my current needs.

So let us end with a picture of the dragon’s breath I got with 1.0 mm nozzle at full gas.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

 

 

Project Badgermascus – Part 1- Three Pieces of Steel, Two Kinds of Failure

Well, the title gives away that this article won’t end well. I am glad I did not start to write about this project right from the start as a series, I dislike having expectations build up only to be disappointed so I do not wish to do that to readers. And this is why I was also putting off work on this for so long – it was always a project with the potential of high reward – and high risk of failure.

You may remember that Marcus was so very kind and has sent me some damascus to play with, three pieces to be precise – one san-mai of 1095 and cable and two pieces of just cable.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Here you can see the san-mai piece on the right already partially cleaned and ground, then in the middle is the smaller piece of cable with the scale cleaned off already with vinegar bath and on the left the big piece of cable damascus as it came. On that one, I had to grind the scale off with an angle grinder and after that, I have ground all the pieces to flat-ish until I could not spot any imperfections on the surface that might signify poor weld. This must be done since each inclusion or poor weld increase the probability of failure. It took me the whole last Friday to do this.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

With all the pieces flat, I could decide what kind of blade I would want to make out of them.

The san-mai damascus had one end of the bar rather ugly and it had an unseemly weld right in the middle, so making it into a long blade with hidden tang was not feasible. So I have decided to make it into a small drop-point boot hunting knife.

The smaller piece of cable damascus would look great as a dagger, but for that, it was too thin, so I have decided to make it into a pairing knife.

The big piece was just about the right size for either a big chef-knife or a chopper. I have decided to go for a chopper.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I cut the excess with angle-grinder and then ground the outlines and bevels with 40 grit belt (which was a matter of mere minutes with my new magnetic jig, it works really well and I am happy with it). A draw-filing took care of all the perpendicular scratches and flattened the surfaces a bit and my new file-guide has proven itself very useful for making the shoulders flat and straight. It really does speed up the work when you have proper tools at hand. And in case you are wondering why the clothespins  – they reduce vibrations and therefore the noise the blade and the tang make when filing the shoulders.

Drilling the holes was a nightmare, I have destroyed three 3 mm drill bits, which is something I did not expect. But I have managed to drill al I need and with this, I was done on Saturday.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Today I have decided to normalize the steel before quenching, so I have covered all three pieces with a thin layer of clay to protect them from decarburization, I have heated them above austenitic temperature and then put them into a bucket of pearlite to cool off. That is a bit slower than how normalizing is usually done (which is air-cooling for about an hour) but faster than how annealing is done (which is very slow cooling in the furnace for multiple hours). I have done this two times for the cable damascus (with straightening after the first cycle – the pieces warped, showing that it was a good call to normalize them) and after that, I have performed one more air-cooling cycle for the san-mai, because it is much thicker than the other two and has required more straightening.

I wanted to try differential hardening on the cable damascus so I have prepared a mixture of clay, perlite, and a tiny bit of water-glass as a binder and adhesive. I did not want to wait overnight for it to dry, so I have used first a heat gun and then the forge with low-fuel reducing flame to dry it quickly, thus the dark greyish color of the clay. No clay fell off, it did not crack either, so far it seemed all to work well.

Well, quench is when it all went wahoonie-shaped.

First I have quenched the small blade, in water. Unfortunately, it was so small that I have overheated it, and thus instead of the differentially hardened blade, I got a full hardened one. I have decided to not try again and I will finish it as it is, it can still be a good blade, just not with a hamon.

As second went the san-mai. I have quenched that first in sunflower oil, pre-heated to 100 °C, and then in water. It has definitively hardened and it seemed to be OK afterward.

Last I have hardened the big chopper. I have learned my lesson from the small blade so I have paid more attention to color, adjusted the flame, and took care to heat the blade to only just above the austenitic transition on the cutting edge and just below that on the covered spine. Then I plunged it into water, agitated, pulled it out, plunged it in again, and agitated it some more to cool it off below the martensite start temperature quickly enough for it to harden.

And during that second plunge, I heard a quite tell-tale “ping” sound. That was the moment I knew this blade has failed. I have scraped the scale and clay off with an old angle-grinder disk and took it in daylight to search for a crack. And I found it, right in the middle of the blade.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I will polish the blade a little bit in order to see whether I have succedes at the differential hardening at least (preliminary scratch-test would suggest yes). However the size and position of the crack make it unlikely that the piece will be salvageable for a smaller/thinner blade, it is smack in the middle and it seems to go all the way through the hardened part right up to the soft material on the spine.

Today was not a good day, however from what I have read, this happens even to very experienced smiths. Even so, it sucks. I hope that at least the remaining two blades have no nasty surprises hidden for me.

I will have to buy some high-carbon tool steel to practice differential hardening some more.

Making Kitchen Knives – Part 22 – Second Evaluation

The results are in, and there is not too much to say. First, a picture that is worth a thousand words:

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

As you can see, I have indeed reduced the time needed to manufacture a knife by working in bulk, but only partially. The biggest time-saving was in the polishing of the blade, and that was mostly achieved by changing the method from manual polishing to mirror-polish, to satin-finish with the tumbler.

Where I have saved time by working in bulk, was in the basic grind of the blade – here has also significantly helped the magnetic jig that I have later improved again – and later on in heat treatment – here I did save a lot since I did not have to wait for the forge to heat-up and I only had to prepare everything once.

The small savings in other steps are “nice to have” but they are mostly insignificant. What I have to concentrate on now is the 20 minutes time per piece that I have spent correcting various mistakes, like re-grinding curly blades etc, and the nearly an hour that my workload grew for finishing the handles. But I think there I can only significantly save time by working with resin stabilized wood, which is not possible for all the woods involved (oak, jatoba, black locust), but could significantly help with the semi-decomposed wood that turned out some really beautiful pieces.

The overall time reduction of nearly three hours is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, it would probably be even better had I really worked on this consistently from start to finish and not with various interruptions over the span of over a year.

From this point onward I won’t write about this project in detail, but I will continue to take time measurements and trying to optimize my manufacturing process some more.

Making Kitchen Knives – Part 21 – The Last Six Knives

There is not much to say about these, they are all made from one partially rotten palette. Therefore I do not know precisely what kind of wood it is. I suspect it is birch because one of the boards had still a bit of bark on it, but the palette was obviously made from scraps, so there could be several species involves. So other realistic possibilities are poplar and beech.

Since it was from planks, I had no control over grain direction, but I have at least paired the slabs to the best of my ability so they are of the same species – they varied wildly in coloration – and in three cases, I ended up with pairs where one slab had more interesting grain. And, in those cases, I have given this slab on the right side of the knife, where the signature is.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

These three are those with more plain-looking handles, besides rich brown color from the ammonia fuming there is not much to see here. I have no idea why the logo etched so strangely on the second one, it just did. Maybe the metal was a bit dirty so it etched only on the edges, where there is stronger current? I did wipe all blades with acetone, but maybe not enough.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This one has a nice dark stripe of ever so slightly more decomposed, but still hard, wood running down the middle. The placement of the pins is purely coincidental, at least I do not remember consciously putting the holes exactly into the stripe.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This one has a knot in the wood. Unfortunately, it is so dark, that I currently cannot make a good photo of it without overexposing everything else. The blade on this one is one of those that curled on the edges, so I had to re-grind it into narrower shape.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And lastly a piece with extremely beautiful grain, almost like a burl. This one piece really shows that half-rotten wood is not necessarily only fit for burning.

Making Kitchen Knives – Part 20 – Three Finished Knives

Works on this project are finished, so today I will share three more of the resulting products with a bit of commentary about the lessons learned with each.

First a knife with handle from larch.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This single piece is one of the biggest reasons why I have lost a lot of time with the finishing of handles. Larch wood, as it turns out, is pretty, but it is really shitty for knife handles. It is softwood, but that would not necessarily be a problem in itself. The problems are two: 1) It is stringy, so it has a tendency to tear-out, burning, and gumming up belts. 2) The late-summer-growth is significantly harder than the spring growth and that causes all kinds of problems when trying to shape it to anything other than a plank.

Further, the ammonia fuming did nearly nothing to it, except perhaps making it a bit darker.

I suspected that it is probably not a very good wood for this purpose, and my suspicion was confirmed. I won’t use this wood anymore unless perhaps stabilized with resin. I only used this one piece because it was a gift by a former colleague, who is in turn the intended recipient of this knife. The result is not ugly, but it is much more work than it is worth.

Next is jatoba.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This was commissioned, so this is the only blade that will be sold (for a very moderate price). Part of the order was the etched star on the left side. I am a bit anxious about how the knife will be perceived. This customer too was warned that they cannot expect perfection, because I am still learning, but you never know. If they toss it on my head, I will have to deal with it.

I probably will not bother with treating jatoba with ammonia in the future, not in big chunks. It only makes the wood significantly darker and it is prone to develop cracks in due course, nothing else. It is not ugly – otherwise, I would toss it away – but I personally do not think it is worth the hassle. What untreated jatoba looks like you can see here.

And last today cherry.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I am a bit ambiguous about how this turned out.  I love the look of untreated cherry wood (see here) and I was hoping perhaps, that the orange color will become richer and deeper. Instead, it has turned into chocolate brown. Not ugly brown, mind you, but brown all the same. Cherry wood is also very prone to develop cracks, but these two pieces almost miraculously were crack-free, I suspect that the strictly perpendicular and straight grain orientation has played a role (they were split from a log, not cut). I will perhaps do the fuming for cherry in the future for thinner pieces with straight grain to use them as a contrast with untreated cherry for intarsia, spacers, inserts, etc. The wood is a joy to work treated as well as untreated, I would use nothing else if I had enough of it.

I have messed up the etch of the number, you can see the straight line where I have accidentally run with the etching graphite rod over the edge of masking tape. But nobody is going to complain about this, because I am keeping this knife for myself.

There will be one more post with the remaining six knives and then we shall look at the time-analysis.

Magnetic Chuck for Grinding Bevels

You may have noticed my previous iterations on building a chuck to help with grinding consistent bevels on kitchen knives. Well, I had a lot of thoughts about it and I thought I can significantly improve it. And luckily I have managed to buy some raw materials before the shops were closed.

I am not going to write full how-to instructions this time, a few words, and the finished thing must be enough for this time around I was still figuring some things on the fly and there were some issues that did not go as planned. However I will probably make another, smaller one, for shorter blades and if I manage to not mess that up, I will make a full tutorial on that one, with clean pictures and components and so forth.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Here you can see the face with four magnet batteries up front and a tiny ledge on the bottom to have a reference point for the top of the blade. I have made magnets using the same method as last time, only this time I have glued pieces of aluminum between the faces of the mild steel slabs. The body is made from a square aluminum pipe. I cut openings for the magnets in it and to fill the hollows, I have used squared beech timber. That allowed me to simply glue everything together with epoxy and added a bit heft to the piece. I have also used square pieces of aluminum to glue in the sides of the pipe to get perfect seal all-around against water.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Setting the angle on the last one was a bit difficult. It was done by means of four screws protruding from the bottom, and if they did not stick out all exactly the same amount, it could wobble during work which is not ideal. And they did catch on the edges of the grinding table. Here you can see the simplest solution to that problem that I could think of. On the back of the chuck are two holes with M6 thread. On these two M6 screws hold a flat aluminum profile through two elongated holes. To adjust the angle I simply loosen the screws, slide the aluminum profile up/down as needed, and tighten them again. Against the last iteration, this has the advantage of full linear contact with the base plate all the time, even on the edges, and also it is much easier to set up.

I am trying to get my ducks in the row again, finishing finally the current batch of kitchen knives and preparing for the next one. I hope the two and a half days that I have spent with making this were well spent. I still have no functioning forge, but I work on that too, and hopefully, I will have something to say about that soon.

Corona Crisis Crafting XV: Gotta Craft Them All

I tend to go through crafting cycles. Right now I have little motivation to mix resin or, lets face it, sand it (sorry, voyager. I promise you will receive your stuff). Right now it’s back to the sewing and embroidery machine. I also found the cutest Pokemon designs on Etsy (apparently they don’t try to beat their fandom into dust by wielding the copyright maze heavyhandedly)

The technique used here is called “in the hoop” embroidery, which means you’re not just embroidering some designs onto fabric, but assemble the whole project more or less with the embroidery machine while your fabric remains in the embroidery hoop.

These neat pouches are a combination of an in the hoop design from Urban Threads a long time ago and the Pokemon applique I already used on the mask.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

They are also neat ways to use scraps because you only need a bit more than a letter size piece of fabric.

Next one was created by sewing the individual pieces in the hoop and the assembling them by hand. It’s not a toy I’d hand to a baby (but I got lots of baby suitable plushie designs anyway), but aren’t they cute?

©Giliell, all rights reserved

The little one( meaning my kid) “borrowed” the larger one (meaning the Eevee) and the told me the next day that Eevee had called her mummy and she couldn’t return it now because you mustn’t separate babies from their mums. Yes, I got a smart kid. It’s not the first plushie that she adopted by emotionally blackmailing the original owner. Not that I wouldn’t have simply given it to her anyway…

Now for the cost of those: this is not a way to save money. I had the fabric for the larger one lying around, but of course I needed (cough) some better fabric for the small one, so between the design and the fabric (though there’s still quite some left for more of them) I’m down 50 bucks and of course I could simply have bought two Eevee plushies for that money…

Making Kitchen Knives – Part 19 – Two Finished Knives

I have decided to throw the pictures at you piecemeal and not all at once. I want to say a bit about each blade and I think that cramming that all in one post would be counterproductive, it would take too long before I could do it and I might get depressed by writing about all the things I did wrong with every piece all at once. I hope you don’t mind.

Two knives are not only finished already, they are with their owners. I did not get any feedback on their use, because for that was not an opportunity yet, but they were well received, despite their flaws. But, well, they say don’t look a gift knife in the mouth or somesuch…

First, let’s say a bit about this universal kitchen knife for my favorite aunt.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

It is one of the best blades, strong, straight and stiff. Exactly what I was aiming for, capable of cutting leeks as well as melons. The handle is made from black elder (Sambucus nigra) wood.

You can see tiny cracks on the faces. I personally do think they can add a bit of a character to the wood – especially if the wood is partially decayed, as you will see on some of the next blades too – but that is not always the case and sometimes they are just blemishes. From a functional standpoint, they won’t be a problem. They are filled with the boat lacquer and thus sealed and glued shut. Anything that destroys the wood now would destroy it even if it were pristine. But it is something I have to figure out how to prevent. I will probably have to seal the ends with silicone or epoxy glue before pickling the wood in ammonia next time, or make the pieces a lot longer (I did make them longer prior to pickling, but apparently not enough).

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And pickling black elder wood I shall, that one thing is sure. Untreated elder wood is yellowish, but the color is nowhere near this bright and rich. I have always loved yellow color, and I think this canary-yellow looks just beautiful. Unfortunately, I cannot show you untreated wood for comparison here, but I will at some point in the future.

What I do not like are the dark shadows around the pins. They are not burned wood (they are grey-ish, not brown-ish), but maybe they are dirt from polishing that got stuck in the epoxy. I will have to look into this next time and maybe not go on too high grit polish before the lacquering and maybe carefully scrape it instead. The wood is beautiful, hard, has small pores, and is a joy to work, but it dirties easily.

The second presented today is a fish gutting & filleting knife for one of my uncles.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This was ground from one of the blades that came out curly, but it was my plan to take one of these blades and re-grind it for a fish knife from about November 2019, when my uncle expressed a wish for it. The blade is very thin, flexible, and pointy. It would cut vegetables of course too, but I do not think it is suitable for tackling difficult cabbage.

The handle is made from black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), and this is one of the woods that had a really strong and a bit surprising reaction to the ammonia. You can see in one of my previous posts that untreated black locust wood is honey-yellow/brown with a greenish tint to it. But it apparently contains a lot of acidic components that react with the ammonia and its color got real funky in the process.

When working it, I thought at first that I am burning the wood, and I was trying to sand it slowly and carefully not to do so. It took me a while to realize that whilst I indeed can burn this wood (it is super-hard), I am not doing it. It just looked that way. My subsequent reaction during the work was somewhat “meh” and I thought I won’t bother with this in future anymore, there is plenty of brown woods out there.

And then I have changed my mind.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

What you, unfortunately, cannot see in the picture is a sort of tiger’s eye effect the lacquer has brought out in this wood’s grain. It looks iridescent and it changes color from light brown with a golden glint to nearly black depending on the angle you look at it. So I went from ” I won’t bother with pickling this wood again” to “I am going to pickle this in buckets”.

Regarding flaws, this knife suffers from uneven shoulders, and it won’t be able to correct them with exercise. I only noticed when I was etching the logo, that I ground the forward-facing facets on the scales slightly askew. Nothing major, but it is visible with the naked eye.

Slight asymmetries in the handle scales that I have spotted too late are actually a bit of a theme in this batch and it is something that I too will have to try and figure out how to prevent. Eyeballing the things during grinding until my eyes start to water apparently still is not enough.

And that’s it for today.