Damascus Birthday Knife (pic heavy)

[Will W.]

Hello all. 

This knife will be going to my sister-in-law for her birthday. It snuck up on me so I had to rush a little bit, and my work suffered a little. There's still some grind marks and file marks that I wish I could have worked out. 

I made the Damascus for this knife using  1/8" 1080 and the highest carbon pallet strapping I had (still a pretty low C content. ~1/16" tested using quench and break method) alternating 1 layer 1080 and 2 layers pallet strapping up to 16 layers, welded and then folded a single time for roughly 32 layers. I potentially could have folded again, but it was thin as it was and I didn't want to press my luck. The pattern is not as drastic as I was hoping for, but it looks better in person than the pictures show. 

8" overall with a 4-1/4" blade. White walnut handle, stained "sedona red" with 1/4" brass tubing pins. Im not exactly sure how well the tubing pins hold by themselves, so i was quite liberal with the epoxy. Quenched at ~1600° in vegetable oil and then tempered at 375° for an hour. Despite the lower carbon content from the pallet strapping, it hardened up pretty well. Etched in muriatic acid. The file work goes all the way around the tang. 

The sheath is leather. The leather was very pliable and... "Floppy" for lack of a better term. I hardened it by applying melted beeswax, and allowing it to soak into the leather and solidify. This also colored it nicely. I am no leather worker, and my stitching shows. I used leather lace. I couldn't figure out how to end the stitch however, so I put an eyelet in (also brass tubing) and put both threads through before tying a knot on the other end. It looks a little odd, in my opinion, but I'm satisfied with it. 

Anyways, thanks for looking! Comments and criticisms are welcome, as always. 

 

[D.IVO]

  It appears the blade is bent in the 6th picture and those file scratches in the ricasso are nasty.

You done well with the pattern weld but needs a lot of polishing, truing the bevels and removing the scratches.  Does your sister in law deserve the extra effort?Up to you.

 

Cheers

 

[JHCC]

4 minutes ago, D.IVO said:

Does your sister in law deserve the extra effort?Up to you.

And your spouse....

[Tubalcain2]

45 minutes ago, JHCC said:

And your spouse....

why would u think his sis in law is also his spouse???

[JHCC]

24 minutes ago, Tubalcain2 said:

why would u think his sis in law is also his spouse???

I'm saying it's up to his spouse as well as up to him. As in, "It's good enough; it's only for my sister" vs. "Make it perfect! It's for my sister!" 

 

[ThomasPowers]

I try to not get sucked into such things as I have 11 Brothers and Sisters in Law + their Spouses.

[Will W.]

D.IVO

First off, thanks for the honest reply. 

I agree completely about the file scratches. Thats all I can see when I look at it. I simply didn't have time to take them out, I finished everything up the same day I gave it to her. She absolutely loved it though, and said it will be put to good use, so I'm happy. 

Regarding the bend in the blade, I assume that something happened with the photo to make it appear that way. I realize that sounds silly and like im trying to deny that i did something wrong, but I feel like I would have noticed that when I was working on it, but I noticed no such thing. Perhaps it slipped by me, though. Wouldn't be the first time. 

I tried to polish it as well as I could without taking away the decent pattern I had (or hiding it, rather.) I have little experience with pattern welding and etching, in truth, so I'm not extremely familiar with getting the patterns to look good. I learn a lot every time. 

Thomas

Now that's a lot of birthday knives that need to be made.