Gavin Rondeau

I took a class last weekend with Nick Anderson of Nanda Knives at Jim Austin's fabulous shop in Oakland. It's been years since I made a knife and this class was about as much fun as you can have with your boots on. I took 12 pages of notes! I was particularly keen on this class because culinary knives are something I've struggled with in the past. 1084 around 6.5"at the cutting edge. Handle is curly koa with board butter finish. As that wears off I'm planning to try out Hassui ceramic finish (also known as liquid glass). You can bet I'll be making some more.

JHCC, Thanks! I'll check that out.

I really like all of your pieces here and would love more details on how you made them. I'm particularly interested in the scorp, the bowl gouges and most intriguingly the auger bit. I've wondered about that for some time.

Lanternnate, thanks!

Lou L, thanks and you're right. I wouldn't baton with it either but it handles pretty sweet when carving green wood. templehound- thanks! After seeing your work, I consider that high praise. And you're not wrong, I did have a mishap with the groover.

D.IVO thanks! I wouldn't say perfect but I was pretty happy with it.

Could you elaborate on this? I've tried a variety of things for electroetching resists and not had much success.

I forgot to say, your feedback is welcome!

This one is kind of a sister blade to my previously posted walnut-handled one. Gemsbok horn bolster, bird's-eye maple handle, hand-forged 1084 blade. Hand-stitched, wetmolded, veg-tan dangler sheath.

JHCC, I'm starting to feel like there's a theme here. I appreciate the feedback and I think you both make a good point, re: moving fully into either a more rustic or refined aesthetic. That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately and finding tricky in execution. I'm not going to change this knife, though. It's usable and carves well (and hasn't sold on my etsy page so it's mine now) and I'd rather take a fresh crack at another iteration than continue to faff with this.

Latticino, it's definitely not traditional and you make some good points. I do a lot of green wood carving (spoons and such) and a narrower blade/point is handy for that. Thanks for the complimentary remarks. The varied finish is something that I arrived at inadvertently, it was originally much more satiny but after much work on waterstones and stropping it came to look fairly polished. It's pretty close to flat ground with a little appleseed convex at the very edge. I'm actually working on some more traditional puukko-styled knives at the moment, I think they're just about tops for an all-'rounder.

So, I've never posted any knives here (just a lot of lurking) but I think I could use some feedback, so here goes. Hand-forged from Aldo's 1084, blade is 3.5" with distal taper, tempered at 325 F. The handle's 4", bolster is gemsbok horn, PetSmart cow's bone spacer, black walnut for the handle and netsuke. Sheath is wet-formed and hand-stitched 8 oz veg tan, the rings are cold bent from brass rod.

There's also Central States Metal Artisans which meets every Monday night starting at 6 PM in Haysville. It's free to come observe but if you/he really want to dive in they prefer you become a member. The dues are $20 (per year!), so it's pretty reasonable. The first Saturday of the month is the bigger members' meeting. I've been to several Monday nights and they're very welcoming and generous with knowledge.

iron dwarf, did you get your heater up and running? Are you satisfied with it? I've been eyeing those Chinese units but I'm too chicken to be an early adopter.

The wood shop is going to be framed in with its own separate dust collection and, I think, HVAC. There will be a dedicated space for hot work. We have the forge and a couple of electric kilns for ceramics already. I am looking into movable partitions/welding screens for UV protection. The torch cart is a good idea. I'll be looking into that. We're planning to have a bin for safety glasses and hearing protection by the doors and an ironclad rule for their use. We're instituting a tiered training system, essentially certifying people for use of the more dangerous/fiddly/complicated equipment but I also like the idea of those shop manuals for basic stuff. I'm also planning to have some workshops covering many of these techniques. And thanks, guys! This stuff is all gold.

We definitely won't let it stop us! I keep having to restrain myself from going whole hog with blacksmithing stuff and taking everything over. The wood shop guys are doing that a little bit and I have to push back for the metal shop. I don't want there to be four forges, two power hammers, six anvils, a partridge in a pear tree and no room for anything else (actually, I would love it but that wouldn't serve the larger purpose).

Once again, thanks! Since it's designed for heat treating I guess the thermal mass would reduce temperature swings from adding stock but increase the warm up time, right? I forgot to ask the seller what he lined it with but I guess we'll find out when we start using it in anger. This forge kind of dropped into our laps and, I admit, I pushed for it. I should have done some more due diligence. I like the dump truck analogy, I might crib that from you.

Thomas, Thanks for the response. That's super useful info about the Idea Foundry! I'm going to contact them for sure. Re: the Johnson, it's a smallish one that belonged to a knifemaker. It's forced air and was recently relined. It's only 13" deep. Is there something inherent to the design that makes them really inefficient? Since we have it we'll probably use it but I'll keep an eye on fuel consumption. If it's that bad then we'll probably build a new one!

So, this is pretty close to my first post here but I've been a lurker for a long time and I think there's a lot of collective intelligence and insight on this forum. I'm a member of a local (Wichita, KS) maker space and we've just recently moved into a substantially larger facility. I'm the official benevolent dictator of the metal shop (due entirely to enthusiasm and not to expertise) which means I'm now in charge of safety, shop layout, advising the board regarding equipment purchases and etc. The space is 9000 sf total and the shop area is a 48'x59' warehouse space that the metalworking shop will share with a fully equipped (and enclosed) wood shop and a small ceramics/pottery area. We're working on finalizing the space allocation within the larger volume as well as working on layout and equipment and etc. as I mentioned above. The metal shop has a porta-band type saw, a HF mini mill and HF mini lathe, a small wire welder and a Johnson 120 forge and 100 lb. LPG cylinder. We currently have plans and (donated) funds to purchase a Tormach 1100 CNC mill and a budget of $10500 for additional purchases of tools, infrastructure and safety gear. We're looking at doing some rewiring that would leave both the wood shop and the metal shop each with a 200 amp box conveniently sited on opposite sides of the space and we're investigating having an existing natural gas line rerouted to the metal shop side and setting the forge up to run on that. Ventilation is going to be an issue but we're working on that too and I think it's solvable. We hope to expand our capacity in the most flexible way possible in addition to being a place people can access more specialized gear than they could support in many home shops including possibly a treadle hammer, a manual lathe, more and better welding equipment, grinders, sheet metal tools and possibly, in the future, a small/medium scale casting setup. So, any suggestions?

I use a broach I made from some of Aldo's 1084. It's based broadly on one of Bruce Bump's. I left it full hard. There's a thread on knifedogs where he has some good pictures. I've actually been meaning to modify mine but it works better than anything else (files, chisels, etc.) that I've tried.