Inspiration of the Fogg kind {Yakuza Bowie style} WIP

Benr.t

Benr.t

Well-Known Member
Hey everyone! So this is something I have wanted to do for a very long time. Don Fogg's knives have been a big influence for me with my work, and his Yakuza Bowie II is a stand out piece. Probably in my top 5 favorite knives of all time. Just a powerful design. I decided to build a knife inspired by it. With this one I am not trying to copy his, it's just a source of inspiration thoroughly mixed with my design elements and style. His was a chisel ground, mine will be double ground. I will likely do a chisel ground version as well eventually.


I figured I would would post a couple pics of the build.


Laying out the design on a big ol' chunk of 3V.



For extra weight reduction and better balance, I went with a flat bottom radius-ed fuller. Manual mill, no power feed. Lots of cranking. :D



My signature tapered fuller on the spine. This is a feature that I put on most of my large Japanese style fixed blades.



Blade profiled and fullers milled.



I didn't get any rough grinding pics, but here it is ready for pre HT hand finish.



Bevels cleaned up by hand.



Hand filing the shoulders square for nice guard fit.
 
Ok, I've been working like crazy on this thing all week. Finally uploaded some more pictures, so her you go!


Here is a pre HT pic of it next to my Shinobi tanto, which is a pretty large knife. It pales next to Gojira!!!!



Decent size piece of high temp foil needed for this one.



All wrapped up.



I didn't get any pics of HT. To do it properly there can be little delay (minutes) between the Plate quench at 2000+ degrees and soon after into Liquid nitrogen. It is a crucial process that I have spent a lot of time perfecting. My knives are first and foremost high performance tools, the HT is one of the most important elements of that. The blades soaked in Liquid nitrogen at -300 overnight.



This is them coming back up to room temp before temper.



Here the blade is out of it's temper cycles, and ready to fit the guard.
 
This is gonna be cool. I have one question though. I have often thought about doing my guard shoulders pre-H/T but have always been afraid of stress risers. I assume you've done this before and you've never had a problem. I know I'd never try it on oil/water hardening steels but have thought about trying it on air hardening stuff. Thoughts?
 
Darrin Sanders said:
This is gonna be cool. I have one question though. I have often thought about doing my guard shoulders pre-H/T but have always been afraid of stress risers. I assume you've done this before and you've never had a problem. I know I'd never try it on oil/water hardening steels but have thought about trying it on air hardening stuff. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
I leave a tiny radius, not big. I have never had a blade crack during HT there. Other steels may be different. Your mileage may vary.
 
I appologize for skipping some steps, but you get the general idea.
Here we go!


Laying out some lines for scallops in the guard.



Guard scalloped and mounted in my cool little hand vice so I can do an orange peel texture on it. I do this with a wire wheel in a bench grinder.



Guard and spacer.



Next up is finishing the blade.
After temper I blast the mill finish flats and the fullers and then darken them. It gives a nice contrast that I dig.
Blasted.



Blackened.



Next I hand finish the spine and then apply my makers mark. I do a nice deep DC etch, no wearing it off!



Boom.



Next up is a ton of hand sanding. 3v is not exactly the most fun steel to hand finish.



Sand, sand, sand, sand, sand and with the magic of the internet......done!!



This is the edge thickness before sharpening, right around .008". This thing will make an awesome chopper.
 
Blade finished and all wrapped to protect it, I am ready to press fit the guard.



I use my shop built knifemaker vise clamped vertically the hold the blade while I drive on the guard with a sledge.



All snug as bug.



95% of the time if I use menuki, I make my own. I decided to go fancy on this one and use some Alpha knife supply black timascus. :cool:



I thought I got pics of my shaping them, but apparently not. Here I am heat coloring them after they are buffed.



Next up is the handle. I do a base layer of rubber (hard neoprene) under my wraps on my larger blade. Then a nice tight wrap of of black hemp cord.



Starting the wrap. I use very high tech menuki holding apparatus.



Finished wrap, both sides. Ready for epoxy.






Next I saturate the whole wrap in West systems G/flex epoxy. Messy process, no pictures.


Once I clean up the epoxy, it cures overnight at which point we have a finished knife!











 
Somehow I knew it was gonna turn out nice. I absolutely love the texture on the guard. I'd love to know more about your process for getting that texture.
 
Here goes for the sheath!


Someday I will have a large table for laying out sides of leather, until then I get help. : )



Here are all the components cut and ready. Shark and bison.



Time to make the belt stud. Cutting up a chink of Zirc.



Squaring up.



Drilling for mounting hardware.



Tapping.



Profiled.



A little sculpting.



I decided now would be a good time to try carving for the first time ever. Why not start with zirc right?! :D



Feeling a little skully.



Looks good so far!



Finished up. Time to heat color!



Dark skull!



Glued up, stud mounted and throat/tip stitched. Ready to stitch the sides. All hand stitched by the way.



Stitching.



After the edges are dyed and burnished I apply my own beeswax blend leather finish. All natural, has great feel, and smells awesome!



Finished package! Story time.... Since Mr. Fogg's was inspired by a whaling knife, this knife is named Gojira (Godzilla) which means Gorrila/whale, Godzilla battles King kong, from skull island.......The shark and buffalo skin hearken to the surf and turf of both monsters, make sense? :cool: :D
 
Here is the final pic from Caleb, figured it needed to be in here as well. :cool:


click image to enlarge


 
Hey Darrin! I can get that texture with a little time and heavy duty steel wire wheel on bench grinder or foredom, wear a mask and mech gloves. There are a few tricks to get pitting deeper too.
 
that is a very cool knife. Don Fogg is definitely one of the people that drew me into this. His work seemed like a receding horizon. It appeared to be, "doable," until I started trying to do it. Then, I realized how elegant and subtle each piece really was.

Then again, downhill skiing doesn't look too hard, until you try it.

I think this knife is great. I don't have the confidence to do anything other than hand sanding or forge texturing on my blades right now. The contrast you got looks nice, and the tapering fuller on the spine is a sweet touch. Finally, that guard and spacer set the whole thing off. They are top notch.

I really like this one.
 
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