No, I’m not referring to proto-fascist conspiracy theorists. This is much more cheerful. I’ve been posting too much about cops beating the shit out of people so maybe it’s time to focus on something a bit less miserable.
I think I am beginning to understand a thing: there are certain lathe accessories that are strictly “build your own” because making them for sale would be difficult (given machine compatibility) and legally dangerous. You’re not going to make any money selling a low-margin piece of tooling because your first customer who doesn’t read the directions and winds up with a chunk of resin sticking out of their forehead, well, there goes your promising career as a toolsmith.
It’s been pretty hot here and I’m heavily disincentivized from running a 2300F forge when it’s 90F out. I know kindling temperature for wood is around 350-400F, but humans melt into sweat puddles long before that. [If you don’t use Freedomheit, that’s 1260C and 204C]
San mai is Japanese for “three layers.” A few years ago, one manufacturer sent around “cease and desist” letters to many bladesmiths that were using that architecture, since their company felt they were the ones who made san mai great again, or something like that. They were roundly told to shove it, and it stuck because the manufacturer was not willing to spend Disney-amounts of money on lawyers.
This is a thing I made the other day; mostly it was a matter of rough-cutting with a diamond wheel then angle grinding it and eventually sanding it.
The test Dune egg is, well, done.
These photos are from commentariat(tm) member ‘dangerousbeans’.
Last night we started to hit the wall around 4:00, but there was still work to do.
This morning, Sam had a great big hunk of steel to thin down. Here’s where the process of “endless refinement” kicks in: you remove things carefully and consistently, shredding off everything that doesn’t look like blade.
This morning, Sam and I assessed the bar that he made, and came up with a plan for how to turn it into two knives – a larger and a smaller one.