About Me
I figured it was about I wrote something for this page. this may be kinda rough and I'll add and tweak it later.
I was born in 1981, I started out with woodworking at an early age. My grandfather got me into it as it was his hobby after retiring. First projects started out simple, a bird house, collapsing basket, things like that. Over time they got a bit more complex. I'm made a variety of things at this point. Some of which include a chess board (I need to make another as that one was lost to the fury of nature), a variety of jewelry boxes featuring an assortment of assembly techniques, a few vases featuring a segmented construction and turned on the lathe, a number of ink pens, but nothing really large. Grandpa had a small shop out of his garage, so we kept on the small side of things. He does a lot of jewelry boxes, vases, and bowls and things of that nature including two very impressive grandfather style clocks.
I've always enjoyed making things. I would draw on occasion, and towards the end of highschool I'd started taking a few classes in pottery. Focusing mainly on wheel thrown bowls and other items. Not been the biggest fan of the hand built stuff. Also took ceramics as an ellective in college twice. It perplexed some of my classmates. They were trying to successfully center and form a small bowl from a small lump of clay, and I'm over on another wheel forming quite large bowls.
I've always been interested in games, books, and movies with a Fantasy setting. I think like a lot of other smiths, the alure of the sword was what brought us to the craft. So in 2005, I was bitten by the bug. While at my grandfather's shop working on finishing a rather large turned vase, I grabbed an old file and set to work grinding it into a knife shape. It received a brass guard, and figured bubinga handle and scabbard. That was the first.
From there I started to look more into forging and how to do it and the tools I needed. I built my first forge, which didn't work all that well. From there I scaled it down a bit in size and based it off a Lively washtub forge. It worked great and I used it for quite sometime before moving on to propane.
I've been making knives for 5 years now. I strive to improve with each one, and am continuously learning new things.
It's about time that I work towards that which played a large role in bringing me into the craft...the sword.
I've been brainstorming a bit on a viking style sword.
About The Knives
I make just about everything on my knives. I make the blades, hand forging them to shape from bars of steel. I shape the guards and handles myself. I typically use stabilized wood on my handles for added durability and resistance to humidity changes. Some really pretty soft woods, require the stabilizing so they can even be used, otherwise they'd not last long. I do make sheaths for my knives, although I've been falling behind in that area. I need to get more made.
I use carbon steel blades for my knvies. This means they will rust without care. I do my own heat treating.
I don't really use stainless for blades as I'm not setup for the heat treating, and it's much more difficult to forge.
The "Bcarta" you see sold on my site and used on some of my knives is a resin and fabric laminate. It's similar to a commercial producty called Micarta, but my homemade version.
I make my own damascus steel (pattern welded steel). Damascus is made by diffusion welding (forge welding) bars of steel together. Simple terms...stack up some bars, get them really hot, keep oxygen away, add a little pressure and they become one. You can then fold it a number of times to get however many layers you're after and manipulate to get a variety of patterns.
The patterns are endless. Due to the process, no two bars could be identical.
I've taken to making kitchen knives with a japanese styling to them. The blades are usually done "san mai" meaning three layers. This is done by forge welding a three layer stack into one bar. Two outside (typically softer) layers and a harder inside core.
I'm capabale of doing a lot of different options on a knife. Feel free to email and inquire if you're looking for something specific. There are some things I'm not yet set up to do, but I may be able to point you to someone who can do it if I can't. I'll add more here as I think of it or as others ask me things that would be a good addition to this section.