I’ve had my blade-making operation shut down for the last 2 years, because my old forge began developing awkward melted holes in the shell, which allowed long burning jets of propane to go shooting out all over the place.
I was clearing up some cutoffs in the shop, and noticed a couple of largeish pieces of bog oak in the pile.
Sheath-making is a fascinating sub-genre of leatherwork. If you have leather carving skills, btw, the recent interest in knives has made teaming up with a knife-maker a very attractive opportunity.
I pulled up in the huge red truck, idling for a while, then finally tried to sneak out and get a picture of the frolick in progress.
What do you do, when someone posts something cool on facebook? Normally, my attitude is that facebook is just terminally uncool and nothing on it deserves to be linked here.
I thought I’d sell my old anvil and get a new one. The surface of the anvil was pretty pitted, and if I tried to forge down an edge, the steel often picked up the pits. Also: new anvils are pretty!
This is a sign I saw outside the grocery store where I usually get my stuff.
When you form the tip of a japanese-style war-blade, you cut the steel at a 45-degree angle then hammer the back over to form the tip. Usually, the cut-off piece goes in the bin, but with oroshigane or tamahagane, the material is valuable enough that you can’t do that.
It’s really an amazing adaptation, to have an anal sac that you can express at someone when they get annoying. Think what human civilization would be like if we had that ability.
I walked out the front door and we both froze, looking at each other.