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A new maker maker friend has been struggling with getting shoulders squared so I made him a quickie file guide. Just a simple one of hardened 1084 to get him going.

One side is glass smooth for filing shoulders. The back side is flat but raw, to use as a guide for grinding plunges.
 

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When I showed the "patriot" table knives on the Bladesmiths forum it was suggested that I should do a fork to go with them so this morning I got a piece of 1/8 in stainless (from an old riving knife off the bench saw) and made up a pattern from one of our english silver ones to see if I could get the prongs cut evenly. Getting the curve to the fork will be a simple procedure as I will make the shape on a piece of 1 1/2 square stock for both top and bottom and press the shape in before HT. It was the cleaning up of the prongs after cutting them that caused a bit of head scratching but with the slack belt I think I can get it about right. My grinder is running with a belt speed at over 3000 sfpm and it is very easy to get the fork caught and flung away as it did when I was trying it but I have the 2 HP 3 ph motor to be wired in soon with a VFD so I can slow the belt speed right down to about hand sanding pace so the catching effect will be eliminated.
The forks will get a similar handle treatment to the knives.
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Volkert Forge said:
Wow Gruff!!! Those forks are pretty sweet. If you lived in America with that Patriot set, you could make a mint
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I have an agent there Jason so all that I make will be headed there anyway. The top fork in that pic is one from our cutlery set that I used as a pattern to make the flat pattern I will use to make the actual forks. This was a trial just to see if I could get the prongs right on a similar thickness steel. Will probably make them from the same .1 thickness 12c27 as the knives
 
Here's a blade I'm currently working on. It was a few scrap chunks of Damascus that I forge welded together. I loosely twisted it to make it more interesting. But that left the pattern pretty open in spots that can be tricky to finish evenly. I was planning a coffee etch to darken it up and even it out but after seeing this, I kinda like this brighter, more polished finish.

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J. Doyle said:
Here's a blade I'm currently working on. It was a few scrap chunks of Damascus that I forge welded together. I loosely twisted it to make it more interesting. But that left the pattern pretty open in spots that can be tricky to finish evenly. I was planning a coffee etch to darken it up and even it out but after seeing this, I kinda like this brighter, more polished finish.

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That’s cool! Looks like burl wood. This blade with a burl or heavily spalted handle would look very interesting.
 
J. Doyle said:
Here's a blade I'm currently working on. It was a few scrap chunks of Damascus that I forge welded together. I loosely twisted it to make it more interesting. But that left the pattern pretty open in spots that can be tricky to finish evenly. I was planning a coffee etch to darken it up and even it out but after seeing this, I kinda like this brighter, more polished finish.

View attachment 67615
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I really like that bright finish too and I would be tempted not to etch it. Hard choice but I know it's gonna be nice either way.
 
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