I thought I would share something I just finished up last night as it was a complete first for me. I had a customer approach me about making a primitive style hunting knife. After tweaking his design some I went to work. We decided to use red mallee gum burl because of its gnarliness and beautiful grain and he also wanted a rawhide sheath which I had never done before, but after reading some great tutorials on the subject I felt somewhat confident that I could give it a shot. Let me just say that being new to working with raw hide it was a pain in the *** to cut unless it was wet so chalk that one up to experience. But overall I was very please with how it turned out and would love to hear everyones comments/ criticisms. The only thing I may have changed was to add a bead to the lanyard but as he will be using it to gut and clean animals I thought I should leave it without ornamentation. 

 

Specs:

 

Over all Length (including hook):  11 1/2 inches

Blade Length: 5 inches

Handle Length: 5 1/2 inches

Thickest part of spine: 1/4 inch

Tip: 1/16 

Blade Width: 1 3/4 inches

Handle material: Red Mallee Gum Burl with rawhide

There are four stainless steel pins one being hidden under the raw hide.

Also there are four small grooves in the spine to act as a thumb grip while skinning.

 

 

 

Thank you for looking!

 

-Robert

Very nice.

you forgot to mention blade material? I really hope you stabilized the malee.  It looks good

The steel I used on this blade was 1090

Love your style Robert , nicely done

Thanks!

That is a gorgeous knife... I love the forged finial at the end of the handle. The sheath is really quite marvelous too. Nicely done! 

wow. i like the knife and the sheath.

That's gorgeous, sir! I love primitive look. The red color on the handle is beautiful! 

That hamon though, that's a real looker, too. What was your process to produce such a beautiful hamon? I've found that hamon-work is much like anything in blacksmithing, everyone has a different way of doing it with different materials.