I hope this is an appropriate place to post pics of my first knife and to welcome comments.
I started with a file, a moose shed, some hard rubber and brass.
I rough cut the blade with a cutting wheel and then normalized with my webber charcoal grill and tested with a magnet (pretty cool).
I did the shaping with a hand and bench mounted grinding wheel and then a hand file.
I was able to cut a slot in the handle with the cutting wheel and then hand work it to get the tang to seat close to the final shape of the handle.
The blade is not yet affixed to the handle, because I have to get most of the scratches and such out of the blade before heat treating and tempering.
I plan to leave some of the file marks for effect. I am thinking of leaving the oxidizing on the blade to keep it rustic looking, but I'm not sure if that is even possible. Will it just rub off? Don't know.
The overall length is 7 3/4" and the blade is 3 7/8".
I am really enjoying this.
I would really like to use clay to get color variation in the blade, but think that might be best left to another attempt.