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It would be a shame not to help the original poster here despite the confusion. My friend Tim Zowada has a very profound saying regarding his knifemaking philosophy- “it is the things you can’t see that matter most.” There are two types of knifemakers that I have encountered over my career...

I think there is a lot of confusion here, so much so that even I am confused from reading the thread.

Let me apologize if I have muddied the waters needlessly. It is just that I mostly browse forums for topics with subjects that interest me, and while I have a look at most any dagger thread, I rarely post myself. So, I also apologize if my enthusiasm has caused me to hijack Kev’s thread, the...

Sorry if I came off heavy or preachy in the previous post, but I get carried away because daggers are a passion of mine, and there are days where I wish I could just become a fulltime swordsmith and not bother with knives. After traveling the world studying original swords and daggers I can't...

Actually Chris, I must respectfully disagree. You are, however, much closer to being accurate with the dagger comparison than the more common “a sword is just a long knife” concept. A proper dagger is at least on the same major limb of the blade family tree as swords, while knives and swords are...

If you want to shop around, here is my stamp maker- Industrial Marking Products I have worked with them for years, and they are about a half hour drive from me. They work mostly with MI industry like the automakers. I have yet to wear one of their stamps out and I press cold into the annealed...

Hello Mark, It would depend on how your press holds things. I get my stamps custom made by a place near me and I had them step the top portion of the stamp down to provide shoulders to seat it in my press. I can still strike it if I need to but since I built a hydraulic unit to press it in I...

It can show that the edge is a different hardness, but it can't tell you how hard that edge is. One caveat is that it can show you how far the different phases are from the edge. ie. if a hamon dips to less than 1/4" from the edge it can be a clear warning sign.

But enough of such trivial matters.... Eskyknives, have you been to the Upper Hand Brewery? It is one of the few in the U.P. I haven't managed to get to yet. Most down here aren't aware that Bell's reached so far North from Kalamazoo.

Two hours! My hats off to you. I lasted only one hour in. Daniels impressed me with some of the stories I heard about his hometown roots and connections, like his local theater, but then I heard some more about his other pontifications and stances and realized that they had corrupted him as well.

A show written by a Hollywoodized guy who is now sadly "above" the people in little MI places like Chelsea.

Greetings from a "Troll" in what my friend, in Boyne Falls, calls the "banana belt" of the lower peninsula. But I guess there is always a place more cold and desolate, like say, the Keweenaw. Most of this post may go over the head of non-Michiganders, but you Yoopers are part of the family...

If you really like the look it could work for fittings though. Like just about anything though, there is a bit of an art to well done color case hardening.

Iron has a very high affinity to oxygen, I have found that the less alloying, and the closer to a basic iron/carbon alloy, the greater the scaling may be. Scale is, after all, nothing but super heated rust. We really don't see much of a contrast with any modern steel. But if you ever work with...

I rode a motorcycle to high school before I was even legal. But I knew the world had changed beyond recognition when I was talking to my son about getting his first car in high school and told him to save some $$ and get a bike like I did. He informed me that he would be a laughing stock for...

If you make knives, you are a knifemaker, if you forge blades you are a bladesmith. I think folks underestimate the impact that damascus steel had on modern knifemaking. There are many damascus patterns that will tell you immediately if they were forged to shape in a blade, rather than ground...

I always get a kick out of surprising people when they think they could predict the kind of music I would listen to in my shop. My listening preferences are driven by two things – nostalgia and variety. I think most of us are subconsciously driven by nostalgia in our music preferences, I have...

I have seen anvils that I had to wonder if they had survived a barn fire, when they behave like this. What I always teach my students during the anvil orientation part of class is that ringing is overrated, rebound is what you really want, and they are not necessarily connected. I tell the...

I personally have not worked with GIMP, but Tim Zowada uses it. I often work on projects with Tim and he is able to do everything that I can do.

I have one final thing before leaving the soapbox, but I feel it is a very important message. Please, please , please keep an archive of at least one very high resolution image of each of your knives that you would care to have remembered! Until recently, I wouldn’t have given this a second...