Camp chopper and older-style mid-tech Benghazi Warfighters

[Stormcrow]

Some more recently completed work.

A forged camp chopper, 80CrV2 steel and TeroTuf handle slabs.  The blade is about 10 5/8" long.  The customer wanted a large finger choil for choked-up work.  It's not the biggest blade I've made by any stretch, but everyone who handled it agreed it was a beast. 

tw04 by James Helm, on Flickr

Kydex sheath.

tw05 by James Helm, on Flickr

The customer requested an exposed skullcrusher tang and a dedicated lanyard hole.  This was a first for me, to build a slab handle with a notch to accommodate a lanyard hole.  I say "dedicated" because the flared tube rivets also afford lanyard attachment points.

tw06 by James Helm, on Flickr

I've been in the very long, slow process of trying to launch a mid-tech stock removal line based on my more popular forged designs.  I haven't posted too much about it because I wanted to have everything ready to roll first.  I'm finally approaching that point.  Along the way I have had small batches of blades waterjet cut and have tweaked my design a bit as I go, getting everything zeroed in to the final product.  I have a very small handful of the older style blade designs in various states of completion, most of which are already claimed, before doing a full launch of the line.

This set of three Benghazi Warfighters was bought by fellow for himself and some family members.  The blanks are waterjet cut from 3/16" 80CrV2 steel, ground and heat treated by me, and handle slabs shaped from TeroTuf using jigs and a series of router bits. 

bw04 by James Helm, on Flickr

The blades have a Caswell black oxide finish (the final version will have a coating) with the touchmark laser engraved.  The sheaths are standardized, one will fit any of the blades.

bw05 by James Helm, on Flickr

A couple of hours after picking these up, the customer called up and laid claim to one of the older-style Little Rok mid-techs in progress. 

[C-1ToolSteel]

All sweet blades. I especially like the big'n!

[Stormcrow]

Thank you!

I ground and heat treated the last batch of old-style Benghazi Warfighters tonight.
 

[templehound]

Your stock removal line has everything this market demands....in fact looking better than most competitors....and IMHO better choice in steel than all that CPM, high alloyed and stainless stuff....80CrV2 is excellent for the field. ....as tough as 5160 and better edge holding than 1095.

They have a nice geometry on the edge and the old school design of finger high and edge low makes them a lot more reasonable than many other products.

It seems that You made the kydex sheaths not so wide as You used to do before, thats good , because less wide is easier to carry and attach.....on the back line of the sheaths the rivets could even brought a bit closer to the blade back, near the tip....if I am allowed to say that, .......but thats just in the cosmetic range.

developing such a stock removal line is in fact very time consuming and very slow as You said......but You did very well and if I would be in military service or the like, I would chose a "Stormcrow-Bengazi"......

 

Cheers

 

 

[Stormcrow]

Templehound - Thanks!  I have improved on my Kydex sheaths as I go, but of course there are always improvements to do.  I'm probably about to swap out to Boltaron instead of Kydex as it is supposed to be more resistant to heat and cold once it's been molded to shape.  It has to be molded about thirty degrees hotter, but otherwise seems to work the same.

These sheaths have been built using some standardized hole layout and trim tooling.  I could probably pull it in a bit tighter, but I had some older pieces of tooling that were too tight, and wanted to give a little bit of room for error.