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JG Elmslie wrote:

any idea if they can export that legally?
I've been wanting to do some bits of ivory - a Cinqueda, for one, and some walrus ivory grips/stuff for viking era bits of kit for ages.


Fossilized or mineral embedded ivory or bark is legal as it is impossible for it to have been poached in recent centuries. There are occasional legal ivory auctions that are still held. I am not sure of the terms behind those. There is also "pre-ban" ivory. My local blade grinder (in his 70's age wise) has several complete large tusks as he collected for his supply reserves in the 1950's, and is sometimes offered remaining "pre-ban" tusks from colleagues who are retiring as a result of old age. He does not sell his stock as raw material however. He stays busy using it. I believe he made around 19 custom order knifes last month.
completed first blade
I finally got the scale materials (stag) and the knife completed. I opted for a high polish instead of high etch contrast. Anyhow, it has a good feel to it and hope it will be something my son appreciates one day when it becomes his.


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Beautiful!!! :)
one of my swords
Here is one that my friend and I did about two months ago.


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Hi,
Here is a couple of years worth of cutlery work. Note that I have made the handles only, I have not yet tried forging my own blades.

From left to right:
2 Fallow deer horn knives, blades from a polish vendor at Visby 2008
Hazel and reindeer horn, blade from a friend of mine made as a copy of a local iron age find
Yew and moose horn, blade from the same guy as the knife next to it.
Birch and reindeer horn, blade from a proffesional bladesmith (Goran Enoksson) a christmas gift to my dear dad.
Ash-handle on a very cute blad bought at Foteviken Viking market this summer. I have sibling to it in Juniper, going to be great for carving.

I really love small blades. Great things comes in small packages as my girlfriend tells me :p

[ Linked Image ]
The one on the far right would make a nice crab knife :p

M.
I like the "crab knife" on the far right too. I would have guessed it to be a leather working, or similar craft related tool. If so, the "palm swell" shape of the handle looks like it would be very good for control of the cut.
Jared Smith wrote:
I like the "crab knife" on the far right too. I would have guessed it to be a leather working, or similar craft related tool. If so, the "palm swell" shape of the handle looks like it would be very good for control of the cut.


It is a nice little blade indeed. 35mm length, 8mm wide and about 2mm thick. I use it for woodcarving mostly. Deep set in the palm and with the thumb on the blade I can make it work almost like a swivel-knife which is handy when trying to do viking style ornamentation. For leather I actually prefer even thinner blades than this!
Last summer, I have finished my first sharp sword. Here are some pics:


Marton, I love the "rain guard" flap, and this style of sword! The scabbard looks like it turned out pretty nice as well.
I have started studying, and am thinking of apprenticing for small knifes. I was present for a fair amount of work (grinding, layout, heat treat, etc.) by Bob Levine, who made the knifes below from a pattern welded twist billet I have worked on since the holidays. (The certificate is cropped, but the alloys are 1095 and 8670 matched to achieve average carbon content near 0.85%. A lot was ground off at two stages, so I doubt much was lost due to scaling in what remained.) The knives took the heat treat really well, and cut thick leather with surprising ease! The first is my gift to a friend for his birthday. The small folder is really a nice small "gentlemen sized" folder. It took many more times as much work to "keep it in a small package" and finish it well compared to the fixed blade knife. The ivory on the folder was harvested by Bob's mentor in 1936. The ivory was cross cut to show the grain. Everything is obviously nice in plain light with naked eye from a distance of a meter, but all seems very hard to photograph. (I increasingly appreciate the photography done on this site as I fail to achieve similar quality at home.)


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This is coarse (80 layer) pattern welded blade I forged Easter weekend. I had Bob Levine finish grind it and make the holster. The sheath is patterned after the style Texas rangers carried. Sharpened blade section is about 5" (13 cm) long.


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Jared,

Well done. Very. Hard to choose best but your "Stag & Blisters" including simple sheath is superb. Your time is well spent. Thank you for sharing.

Carl
Carl W. wrote:
Jared,

Well done. Very. Hard to choose best but your "Stag & Blisters" including simple sheath is superb
Carl


Thank you sincerely for the compliments. I am not sure which is the "stag and blisters", but I would guess it is the first "ladder patterned?" These cost me a lot as I pay the final cutler a "fair" price. In the mean time, I am learning how to work the raw materials. Eventually, I will opt to buy a heat treating oven and a belt grinder, when I judge the materials as worthy.
Jared,
your good results I also encourage me to try to forge a knife.
I love these things.
That axe is great!

And I absolutely LOVE the pocket knife!
Jared, maybe I got mixed up reading your posts but "Stag & Blisters" was intended as a tongue-in-cheek name for this one:

Jared Smith wrote:
I finally got the scale materials (stag) and the knife completed. I opted for a high polish instead of high etch contrast. Anyhow, it has a good feel to it and hope it will be something my son appreciates one day when it becomes his.


due to your prior... "(Came home with blisters all over from where the hot flux sizzled, went inside gloves and shoes while working.....etc. I just had to grimace and bear it since I did not want to ruin it after having spent so much time on a billet.)"

The 9" w/certificate & TX ranger are great too - hard to choose best!

(Btw big thanks to Martin for starting this topic; the simple battleknife (2nd pic) in his first post is a favorite.)
Carl W. wrote:
Jared, maybe I got mixed up reading your posts but "Stag & Blisters" was intended as a tongue-in-cheek name for this one:

due to your prior... "(Came home with blisters all over from where the hot flux sizzled, went inside gloves and shoes while working.....etc. I just had to grimace and bear it since I did not want to ruin it after having spent so much time on a billet.)"


Good pun. I have since acquired a leather apron. I still get an occasional hole in the shirt and flesh though, since I have to stand at an angle to use the power hammer.

The Texan knife was an experiment to see what would happen if one minimizes grinding. It was actually twisted about 10 times during intermediate stages of the folding. Simply forging the twists flat back into the billet "smudges" the layers, and does not achieve the legendary "serpent in the sword" effect to the same degree as grinding after twisting. Some evidence of the twisting operations are better seen on the reverse side that I did not post before.

In comparison, the 9" twist knife with wood handles was twisted about 16 times and had material ground away evenly from both sides. Although it is only one simple experiment, the historical implications to me are that pattern welded swords of Migration era most likely had some stock removal involved to elicit the sort of surviving written comments that they did.


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Sheath added to a knife from previous post, and one more made also with sheath.
My first time doing leather carving. It was fun. I will have to pattern all my leatherwork from now on!


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first simple composite
I had some surprises and fun yesterday at the blacksmithy. I have been working on the most simple possible composite, two billets of opposed twist. I wanted to try welding two billets together, with a long term goal of replicating the classic center section of migration era pattern welded sword cores. I should have realized that it was going to grow into a 20" long by 2" wide by 1/4" thick piece of blade stock since it started out near 2 lbs mass. But, I did not think of that and got into quite a bit of new territory such as welding in sections, and handling a very large floppy blade sized piece of metal near the end of flattening it out. Anyhow, attached are some pictures of the stages of billets, and a preliminary rough ground etch of the blade which should be heat treated by the end of today.


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Last edited by Jared Smith on Mon 07 Jun, 2010 2:28 pm; edited 1 time in total
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