DUCK!!!!

Did a little duck hunting yesterday, a few Wigeons and Gadwals, and a Kimber.

Kydex holster for .45

The project I started last night was to make a second holster for my HK USP Expert.  Though HK USP's are some of the best pistols out there with plenty of aftermarket accessories, there is hardly any products available for the Expert due to its longer slide.  To start I contacted G-Code/Edge Works out of Jacksonville NC who is a holster mfg. for some cool adaptability parts.  G-Code has this neat little product called an RTI wheel which can be mounted almost anywhere to establish a holster mounting platform.  You'll notice the black disk and the aluminum mounting plate.  So I bought an RTI wheel mounted on a hip paddle and an extra wheel to mount in a vehicle.  With the parts, Kydex, and some imagination it was time to start fabbing.

The piece of wood is cut the establish a base in the mold for the aluminum RTI adapter along with being machined on the bottom side to allow room in the tight fitting holster for the slide release and safety to travel freely. 

New holster..

Making knives, forming Kydex, watching the season finally of Burn Notice, can it get any better?
Here is a sneak peak at the new holster I whipped up for my HK USP Expert.

WoW, I was busy today...

I started a knife project today.  Well I kinda started a couple of days ago I guess.  Thanks to Spencer of SAR Global, with some coaching, and his awesome knife making equipment a new blade is born.

It started a few days ago with the selection of steel.  We decided to make a knife from a file.  So I went through my shop and gathered up some files, then I picked the one on the right, because it was the thickest flat file, giving me the optimum size for the knife I had in mind.  The file is a Simonds Nucut Flat-BD, and files are a great piece of steel.  I am still working on attaining the grade.

First things first, a file is hardened and we must remove the temper so into a kiln at 1500 degrees for around seven minutes then shut off and allowed to naturally cool overnight.  Once the temper was removed we went through a whole bunch of other stuff and here's a few pics.

OK, so there was a bunch of grinding, but there was a bit more.  Scribing, profiling, tweaking, different wheel diameters, drilling and so on.  Next is re hardening.  We will have to go back into the forge at 1500 for about 6 to 7 minutes, then right into a vat of oil to quench.  Then into the kiln at 400 with a natural cool down period twice for the final temper.  But we are long from finished,

Lately......

I haven't posted much lately, so here goes..

This first picture was taken while doing a couple of days of tracking and one of the students had this knife which had a great lanyard location and a unique blade finish.  The steel was stained with blots of mustard.

This next one was a windy as hell and rainy day flying around playing pirate...

Next was this past weekend out near Lometa.  This nice little piggy  went "wee, wee, bang"!

And last for this session would be a pic from this morning.  This brand new C-130 Juliet model branding the beautiful Texas flag gave birth to some paratroopers for the first time.  A beautiful day, low winds, and a good dash-one landing.