One hell of a knife.

Well I spent a few hours Saturday and Sunday with Spencer in his shop grinding away on my knife and it has come out incredibly awesome.  I must say thanks a ton to Spencer with SAR Global for all the help and passing on of some of his wealth of knife making knowledge.  What started out as a file has turned into a great field knife which is too beautiful to go beating up but to me a knife should be used.  Here are some recent pictures.  The last thing to do is go out into my shop and whip up a Kydex sheath then go back to Spencers and put the final edge on the blade.

 

At this point we added the brass threads into the handle.

   

And here we began cutting the Ranger Green canvas Micarta for the handles.

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the coolest effects as we began the final grinds was the unintentional hamon created during the hardening process.  It is a visual effect caused by the tempering process. It also separates the harder edge of the blade with the softer ridge. The pattern is merely a side effect of the tempering process where a traditional Japanese swordsmith tries to create a desired transition between the soft and hard metals.  On a sword such as a Katana clay is added to the back of the knifes edge to transfer heat in the kiln at a different rate, creating a softer more flexible frame of the knife while having a harder edge to retain its sharpness.  Harder does not mean stronger, where as hard steel is brittle while soft is more flexible and can withstand abuse but will not hold an edge as well.  We did not intend to create this process, but because of the rough checkering of the original file surface retained towards the back of the blade a hamon was created which also will inherently have a positive effect on the strength of the blade.