switchjv

Incredible work. The sheathe is excellent!

Thats great! and it costed almost next to nothing for materials.

nice shape on the blade. It looks good.

no problem, it was fun to make.

beautiful work!

the knife was completed a couple of weeks ago. it was a blade i wanted to wear for myself. i thought of different designs for a sheathe, and came up with this one. the body is made of elk horn sandwiched in between are leather and brazilian cherry. leather straps hold the sheathe in place with the belt loop as one piece. turquoise inlay and a turned brass stud also were attached to the body.

unfortunately we dont have any stores like that here. i usually get a lot of my information online or through magazines.

excellent. it looks mean.

I know i havent been doing this a long time. however, I think if you landed your hammer blows flatter on the steel rather than on the edge of the hammer, it would have a cleaner finish. Use a 4" angle grinder with a 36 grit flapper disc to rough out the shape then finish with an 80 grit flapper disc instead of the bench grinder. I hope this helps you.

I dont know if this goes here, but here it is. Its a birthday present for my wife. A letter opener forged from a stainless steel bolt. A magnet was somewhat attracted to the bolt. i wasnt too worried about HT the blade tip, since it was just for openening letters. white tail deer tipped on the end. and my first attempt at leather working.

It's fine time you starting messing up High Carbon Steel! Looks good man! Not hard to tell you're loving what you're doing!

On this forum I have been able to watch a lot of folks learn to smith...and some of them struggle for a long time to even do passable work, (if there is such a thing!) And sadly we have seen some folks just fade away discoiuraged.
We have also seen alot of new smiths learn to forge blades and other items really well, Soe sell there work for very respectable money. The success stories have to me a common denominator. They sought help early on. They reached out and visited and learned. That simply cuts the time of the learning curve by a lot. Meaning you can jump father ahead in the same amount of time than you could on your own.
To do this you need a commitment. And that may include a paying job to support it. For this to work youi also have to seize any opportunity that comes youir way and activily seek more of them. Thatg may include you traveling, That may cost youi some money, That may take time and commitment. When I was learning I paid t attended as many weekend cliniics as I could find, I travelled to some of them by airplane and some by truck,,I carpooled , any way I could go I went. i puseued any lead i coiuld find and learned which ones I thouight wouild be the best use of time and money. I never ever waited for someone else to let me know when they would have another clinic i should attend. In most cases i was oneoof the first to sign up and show up. Not sure where youi wish to go with your smithing, Are you a tinkerer or more? Like I said before,,your shop your rules...

Might have to keep an eye out for our meetings in Santa Fe---we move around as people volunteer to have a meeting at their shop. I'm as far south as the "northern" part of SWABA generally gets; save for our yearly conference in Las Cruces in February.

nice, did you make the sheathe too?

Looks pretty good! You might be ready to do some for real! I like this one!

switchjv; where in NM are you at? The next SWABA (ABANA affiliate for NM) meeting is at my smithy in Lemitar right off I 25 near Socorro. We also have a southern branch that meets in Las Cruces at a different times.

Railroad spike with leather. Experimenting with etching too.

Switch before you put too much effort into the ss bolt youi may wish to see if a magnet will stick to it. If not it does not have enough carbon to heat treat and will make a poor blade. If a magnet does stick it still may be tough to heat treat correctly. May wish to rethink what you put so much work into?

Nice! great design.

looks good. im currently making a small one too. its made from a stainless 1/2" bolt.

theyre all great. i think i like the deer antler knife best.

Jeez! thats incredible.

excellent job on the finish! nice save too.

wow! thats great work!

it looks great. nice start!

I finally finished it. I learned a lot about what i did wrong on the hamon. like...using too thin of a clay mixture, and not letting the clay dry completely. however, i think it still came out nice. i used elk horn for the handle. Thanks for looking :D .

incredible work! the sheathe looks great.