RickA
Well-Known Member
Hi Everyone
It's been quite a while since I posted anything on the forum, I have still been reading and lurking for most of the past year, but no contributing. In the time since I joined the forum about three years ago just after I made my first knife, my actual knifemaking time has been very up and down, I have only made about 6 knives in total. Unfortunately for the past 12 to 18 months my day job (Information Technology working for a Silicon valley giant) got in the way of the important stuff, and I did very little in the way of Knifemaking, even to the point of stopping my monthly Knife club newsletter.
I even missed out on the two previous years club competitions at my club, so a couple of months ago, I decided that whatever happened this year I would finish my knife and submit it - regardless of what pressures came my way in the day job.
The theme for this years competition was to make a Bowie, which I discovered is actually quite a broad definition given the multitude of styles all named as Bowie's - which I found in "The Antique Bowie Knife book", when planning my knife. I decided on a coffin handled Bowie with a fairly traditional Bowie style blade and guard. Despite my initial idea of doing whatever it takes, I still managed to start the project a bit late. My initial steel choice was a piece of 5mm thick ATS34 I bought last year, unfortunately this was not precision ground ATS34 - so it came with a hard black scale. I don't have a surface grinder, so initially I tried soaking it in spirit vinegar overnight - this worked but the effect was so mild I would have had to leave it in the vinegar for a week to have any real impact, so I tried Muriatic acid - which removed most of it overnight. Unfortunately the surface of the steel under the scale was now slightly pitted ( I think from the Acid) - I tried cleaning up the surface on my grinder platten but I found out that grinding control is a skill which requires regular practice and is not something you only want to do once a year. I ended up messing up the parallel faces of the steel - so I gave up and switched to a 4mm piece of precision ground O1.
I started on the knife last Saturday, put in a lot of long nights this week, and was rewarded when I won the club competition, my Bowie was chosen out of 10 knives submitted yesterday. I won 2 dozen beers and a Multitool as the prize.
My bowie is shown below (this is the first time I have used my new logo)
Overall length - 12.2"
Blade Length - 8"
Blade steel 4mm O1
Guard - two pieces of 316 stainless (12mm & 6mm) with a 3mm thick phosphor bronze spacer
Handle - Coffin shaped - beautifully figured Wild Olive (the crack in the handle was tiny when i started with the original block, I thought it would sand out, but it turned out to be much larger than on the surface, I only found that out after it was already epoxy'd onto the tang. Apparently these sort of cracks are common in Wild Olive.
Would love to know what you guys think?
It's been quite a while since I posted anything on the forum, I have still been reading and lurking for most of the past year, but no contributing. In the time since I joined the forum about three years ago just after I made my first knife, my actual knifemaking time has been very up and down, I have only made about 6 knives in total. Unfortunately for the past 12 to 18 months my day job (Information Technology working for a Silicon valley giant) got in the way of the important stuff, and I did very little in the way of Knifemaking, even to the point of stopping my monthly Knife club newsletter.
I even missed out on the two previous years club competitions at my club, so a couple of months ago, I decided that whatever happened this year I would finish my knife and submit it - regardless of what pressures came my way in the day job.
The theme for this years competition was to make a Bowie, which I discovered is actually quite a broad definition given the multitude of styles all named as Bowie's - which I found in "The Antique Bowie Knife book", when planning my knife. I decided on a coffin handled Bowie with a fairly traditional Bowie style blade and guard. Despite my initial idea of doing whatever it takes, I still managed to start the project a bit late. My initial steel choice was a piece of 5mm thick ATS34 I bought last year, unfortunately this was not precision ground ATS34 - so it came with a hard black scale. I don't have a surface grinder, so initially I tried soaking it in spirit vinegar overnight - this worked but the effect was so mild I would have had to leave it in the vinegar for a week to have any real impact, so I tried Muriatic acid - which removed most of it overnight. Unfortunately the surface of the steel under the scale was now slightly pitted ( I think from the Acid) - I tried cleaning up the surface on my grinder platten but I found out that grinding control is a skill which requires regular practice and is not something you only want to do once a year. I ended up messing up the parallel faces of the steel - so I gave up and switched to a 4mm piece of precision ground O1.
I started on the knife last Saturday, put in a lot of long nights this week, and was rewarded when I won the club competition, my Bowie was chosen out of 10 knives submitted yesterday. I won 2 dozen beers and a Multitool as the prize.
My bowie is shown below (this is the first time I have used my new logo)
Overall length - 12.2"
Blade Length - 8"
Blade steel 4mm O1
Guard - two pieces of 316 stainless (12mm & 6mm) with a 3mm thick phosphor bronze spacer
Handle - Coffin shaped - beautifully figured Wild Olive (the crack in the handle was tiny when i started with the original block, I thought it would sand out, but it turned out to be much larger than on the surface, I only found that out after it was already epoxy'd onto the tang. Apparently these sort of cracks are common in Wild Olive.
Would love to know what you guys think?
