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I Forge Iron

Brute de forge file knife with mosaic wood


TheoRockNazz

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This blade was forged from a large Nicholson file, so it is quality W1 high carbon steel. Handle is a stacked twisted mosaic wood of purpleheart, reclaimed teak, and reclaimed walnut. Bolster is cast mica powder and G-Flex epoxy.
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I had a lot of fun with this guy, it's a little all over the place, but I like how busy it is.

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Beautiful and creative.

Did you pick those woods because of similar expansion/shrinkage?

I did something similar with birch and walnut. After about 6 months, due to uneven expansion/shrinkage between the birch and walnut, a noticeable lip formed between the layers. I had to sand the handle smooth again.

 

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1 hour ago, TheoRockNazz said:

The teak and walnut were both heavily seasoned (taken from old furniture and whatnot), the purpleheart is relatively fresh, so there may some sort of issue down the road if it's left in a moist environment or the polyurethane is rubbed off and it's left exposed. 

If the wood hasn't been stabilized (i.e., had all of its pores filled with resin), there is going to be movement. Even the most impermeable finish will only slow that down, not stop it. The age of the wood doesn't matter: when I was working in the art restoration studio, we frequently had to do significant repairs on furniture and art objects that started cracking after hundreds of years of stability; moving from European to American homes (with central heating and air conditioning) created more movement than they could handle.

That said, Theo, that's a beautiful knife, and I love the contrast between the sophisticated design of the handle and the roughness of the brut de forge blade.

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Just now, ThomasPowers said:

I've read that the furniture out of King Tutankhamun's tomb with several thousand years of air drying still moves with changes in ambient humidity.

Yes, it does, which is why it (like so many museum pieces) is kept in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment. Also worth noting that the wall paintings in many of the Egyptian tombs are suffering damage from the accumulated moisture of the breath of thousands of visitors -- they were not built (perhaps unsurprisingly) with ventilation systems!

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Hmm, I may have gotten lucky; as part of the cast bolster process the handle was rough shaped then essentially slathered in epoxy, and of course the block was drilled out and filled from the inside. It's not the same as stabilization, but it would plug those immediate pores.

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