This page was for those of you who attended the 2009Micro show


2009

Sea shell guard for Bowie

#2

#3

Engraving
for the Camp knife

Since this Handle for the Camp knife is Brain Coral from the sea I thought it might be best to do the engraving from the Sea. Oddly enough to me at least, I did reverse style engraving where the Sea Horse is relieved instead of normal. I relieved all of the  seahorse then textured the bottom of that to where it would take the black lacquer. I thought that since the Coral itself had the black running dominate through the handle then the seahorse should be black. I wanted to engrave bubbles coming out of his bottom but could not figure out which side that would be, if any of yall know let me know and I will put some bubbles from there. Yeah yeah, I know, but at this point it is still my knife and I thought it would be funny. Maybe I stayed down in the shop too long.
I have just a touch to do to "clean" up the lacquer to go.
 I still have the ferrule to go yet. I was thinking serious of doing the old Greek line engraving sign for water. Not to much black but still some there on the ferrule. Folks this is a one of one from me and there will not be another like it in my life so if you are looking for something special in a camp knife style of bowie this is one to get.

Dagger 
Step by step of making an NLT marked dagger
or
What drives Jerry to pull the rest of his hair out


This dagger will be"set up" different that I have ever did before. In the first place I have not made a dagger in 7-8 years. They are a pain because in a sense what you are making it two knives that are mirror image of each other. This dagger will be different in that I always leave a ricasso [the part of the knife where the name is normally stamped]. The whole design and parts there of will be blend of several countries and time periods.

Personally I do a lot of hand work on daggers. You can see where I have been hand filing this one,now I will begin to "draw" file which means that I will be pulling the file from the handle end to the tip in one motion. This allows me to put and keep the center line distinct and straight. This is the stage that I will begin now. I will have several days of just draw filing the blade to get all of my thicknesses right and the lines straight to where I want them.
Once I get the draw filing complete then I will have to hand sand it to first 120 grit, then 220 grit and lastly to 320 grit finish. At that point I will heat treat and temper the blade. The next step will be the design and layout of the handle and guard. I will keep you folks posted on the steps so you can see how it grows.
  step 2

Here is where I am making a sleeve to go in front of the guard. Traditionally the sleeve was added to a blade mostly for added strength then decorated so you can have both form and function.  I have only did a sleeve once before which was 15 years or longer ago and it was much different than this one so this is just something you are not going to see from me. Look closer at the above picture, I took it in this stage so you can see it is three pieces silver brazed together.

The photo below shows how well it fits the grind of the blade. Let me tell you folks there is nothing to do here but bend, fit, file and pull your arm hairs out to make this work. I also made several of this before I had the one I thought fit well and looked well.

 Both photos show it in the beginning clean up stage. It looked like homemade sin before the photo if you think it looks bad now. Once the cornors and the fit ups are all filed it looks nice and fits nice. You not only have to clean up the flats to make them flat but you have to use "knife" style needle files to get into where the  silver braze ran over onto the off piece.
 I wanted to show this photo so you can learn thats one area to look for when buying from a maker, look and see if the sleeve is uniform in its thickness.




  step 3
 
Here the blade is hand finished
[back and forth, back and forth., Jerry you should have taken that job you were offered when you were a kid].
After the hand sanding and it being polished then it is put in acid to bring out the pattern. Once the blade is etched in the acid, I hand sand it from 600 grit to 1200 grit, from there I use the back side of the sand paper and for the final finish I use pieces of a brown grocery sack to hand polish it on out to where I want it to be.
This dagger has a ladder pattern where the "rungs" are fairly tight or close to each other, a wider spread of "rungs" would give a different look. You can see the rungs better on the bottom of the blade due to the poor photo and lighting skills I have. The blade looks good in person.
The sleeve is slid on so I can rough fit the guard and handle. I still have to hand sand the sleeve to 400 then 600 then lay out the engraving on it with a pencil once that stage begins.

  step 4
Try to come up with a hande, ferrule and guard design
I have spent about 15-20 hours drawing various handle designs. The guard that I keep drawing seems to want to be an S type shape. I have never did an S shape guard on a dagger, normally mine are straight or curved inward a bit.
The drawings below represent some of what may or may not happen on this particular dagger. When I try to get my mind fertile and being able to get a design flowing, sometimes it ends up with certain  material choices being better so I set that drawing aside and draw again. For instance when I got through drawing #1 and #2 I feel like they would be better made in damascus steel with a bit of gold wire to accent it. #3 would work well in stainless, damascus or iron but I am not sure about it, I like it and most likely just need to work on the guard differently so it will pop.
 If this particular dagger does not have any of the attributes of the drawings below then these drawings will show up on another dagger down the road.  Please bear in mnd these are rough drawings only, somewhat to scale but still rough but then again, I do a lot of things rough.






-Update on the drawings-
I decided to go with the design below that I had rolling around in my head. I just had a mental block for some reason. It is simple yet 'flows' well. It has an S shape guard as well, its just that the ferrule is different. I am working on the ferrule portion now and am just taking a mid morning break.
Here is the drawing

This is the rough drawing of what I am going to do.
OK
I have ran into a difficult chore and am have to rethink how to do the ferrule [the collar behind the guard]. The way I thought I could do it I cannot so yall bear with me. The stage I am on it now is all mental about how to approach accomplishing what is in my head and lordy knows you do not want a photo of whats in my head. I should have it figured out in another day or so.
meanwhile, back at the ranch

Making the handle


Orginally I was going to make the guard with a rounded fit, as shown in the chosen photograph above but with a 90 degree fit on the side. The more I kept thinking of it the more I wanted to do the fit but with the sides of it being at 45 degree angles. This way the 'dovetail' of the ferrule helps hold the two piece ivory handle. Its a heck of a bit to get all of that to come along together at the same time by hand. Lordy I bet a half half my arm hair gone from pulling it out over this handle. Anyway, and discoloration you see on the ivory is just due to shop dirt as it is very clean pre-ban elephant ivory. The ferrule that you are seeing on the end of the handle is stainless so it matches up the rest of the dagger mountings.
What I am trying for here is a court dagger, meaning one that would have been worn in the Kings 'court' letting folks know that this person was a person of means.
This is thursday evening, I will be grinding and filing on the handle all weekend just to get the shape.  While working ivory you cannot get it hot, nay, you should not even get it warm to the touch so it is do a little bit and walk away till it is back to room temperature, do a bit more, back and forth back and forth. I hope to have the shape complete by monday evening. I will post up when I get to the next steps. I may be working on the guard in between handle workings, you just have to be careful not to waste any time on the handle, meaning get to it as soon as possible but do not push it, but you cannot just give all of your attention to something else either. Whatever that something else is that you are working on you have to break from it too, so you really gotta watch the concentration of what is going on.

The dagger guard

I have forged the guard from stainless steel as well. I tried to catch what I wanted to do in the drawing.What I am shooting for here is a medival style court dagger. Light, small handled and something that would compliment hanging with the Regent. It took a bit of handle work to get what I was looking for in balance. At this point it balances on the forward end of the blade sleeve. Once I get the pommell plate on and finished I predict that will be about in the center of the blade sleeve which is excellent.
Thats another thing, when looking at daggers balance is just important on those just because it is a dagger sometimes makers forget the balance.
 I have slid it together just so you can see what I am doing, please excuse the bad angle shots and poor lighting. The ivory is polished near the guard just so you can see whats going on with it but I did not want to do too much as I still have to fit the pommell plate. That sucker is giving me fits with getting it formed.I cannot do anything more to this piece until I get the pommell plate finished. Next shot will be of it.

The handle


Ok. I am finished except for the layout of the engraving and the cutting of the lines. I figure right now at about 120-140 hours laying out and engraving time. I still have to do a little ending of some form on top of the pommel. I thought I would give you two angles to look at on the dagger. I changed it up as I am wont [thats a word isn't it? Old but its a word] to do. I like the end result for what I was trying to achieve. I have to keep an eye on myself as sometimes I will get carried away with a particular part, be it whatever part it might be, and have to keep in mind the big picture of what I was trying to achieve, which is a middle ages type dagger.
I will post some different stages of engraving if you would like so that it can also be learned from. As a maker thats my main goal, to educate you, it is your choice of what you want to buy and from whom with my part of this to help you learn what to look for in what steps.


The Engraving
of the dagger

I wanted to show you where I am at with the engraving. At this point I have the main lines cut on the ferrule and the blade sleeve. On the guard I have inlaid the gold and shaded it as well so I could then lay out the rest of the pattern I wanted for it. 
Since I have shaded lines cut on the "Wheat" pattern of the guard and not any deep relief work I thought it would tie in together not only with the guard but also with the whole theme of the Medieval piece to not have deep relief cut on the sleeve and the ferrule. This is why I cut the main lines and then will lay out and cut a diamond or checkered background on the sleeve and ferrule. If I was to do deep relief I would lay out more scrolls coming off of the center, with the background that I have chosen then I want to leave it more open or else the background might run into and confuse the lines of the scrolls. Hope that makes sense.
On the above photo it shows one side being cut with the wheat and the other side just having the main cuts being done. I will go in and start cutting the shading with it. When I begin the first shading cuts of the wheat it takes about 45-50 cuts per "sheaf" to get it right.
Shading of the engraving

Evidently I did not get the above photograph in focus as well but thats the way I am, sometimes I am focused some times I am not.
As you can see I now have the 24kt gold inlaid and the shading complete. It is now time to set up the diamond background. That should tie it all together.
I wanted to do some scroll work but I needed a beginning hench the flower in the center. I am learning this so y'all just bear with me. While trying to teach myself how to engrave I understand better why my former grammer school teachers would throw than hands up, roll their eyes at me and often times give me whuppings. Lordy mercy at the whuppings I took when I was young enough to still wear short legged britches. Least it kept my skin loose for growing.
Today will be all day just doing the layout of the background.
By the way I can't slide it all together for a good photo as the sleeve has poured full of a metal so I can squeeze it gently in the vise to engrave it, if not for that it would be a booger to engrave.
Background
of the engraving

It needs something. The engraving does not stand out well enough to suit me. On one hand keep in mind that it is Medivial in nature so I do not want too much but this needs something. Either double the amount of lines to make the cross hatching finer or Stipple around the scroll/leaves. The stippling part would give it more dimension I think. I still have to fill in the 'captured' places where the scroll and leaves meet. I had though of doing deep relief in those spots but decided against at afterwards.
Man, this is like carrying smoke in a bucket.

Background update

I Just finished the one side of both pieces so you can get an idea of what it looks like. The stippling did make the engraving stand out better on the cross hatched background. I put in mucho hours last night and this morning to get the one side of this so I could get a feel for how it was going to look.
Now, I go back to getting the other side done and during my neck stretching breaks I will get back on the sword so stay tuned for that as well again.
Dagger Pommell
Photo soon. On the pommell. I decided, why at this late date I have no idea, I guess I like to torture myself, however I took a jewlery saw and cut out a flower to match the ones that I engraved.  I engraved it, then silver brazed it to the pommell then bent over the leaves of the flower to sorta drape over the pommell. Then I went in and filled in the empty space with scrolls coming out from underneath the draped flower. Hope that makes sense. I still am figuring how to make a gold ball for the center of the pommell flower. Thats why no photo yet. Or, I might take one tomorrow since yall see these things in all kinds of coniditions and steps anyway.
Remember looking at the pre-ban ivory handle. It is two pieces as is all of my ivory handles when I can get away with it. On this piece I did not want to go with pins in the handle. The dovetail bolster keeps the handle from bowing out there but what to do on the pommell end. So what I did was go in under the pommell cap and I inlaid two small I Beams going across the handle. This way it would have to pull apart two I beams to separate. First time I have done this and it will work great.
Photo probally monday afternoon/evening on the pommell cap.
Dagger Pommell

Not a very good photo but hope you can see what is going on. I have tried to match the engraving of the rest of the mountings the since the sleeve and ferrule had a gold dot in the center of the flower I put a gold ball in the center of this raised flower. I placed it on this brass rod for the photo. I will try and nail the dagger together on tuesday and will shoot the finished piece then.

---

The Sword
2009
NLT marked
The forging
To begin with I need to tell you what type of sword as well as other information about the where fors.
The style of this sword is a cutlass. The inspiration for this is from the late 1600's to about the 1750 period. Though it is called a cutlass at that time the name was interchanged freely with a Hanger style sword and a Hunting sword. I guess it depended upon what you were doing or if you were in the infantry or the navy or just hunting as to what you called the big sharp thing on your side. Beginning about 1750 there started to be distinct differences between the three styles and each developed its "personality" or look to it.
This is a piece that would have been carried before 1750. I found a lot of references with stag handles and some with shell guards. Most had wood handles and very few had ivory though it was done. I chose to do this one with stag.
Nothing denotes power and authority more than a dagger or a sword. They look great hanging in the den or on the office wall as a silent way of saying who is boss. Many kingdoms were lost and gained with a sword or dagger.
Here are some progressive shots and some explanations.

In the photo above I am using the air hammer and forging the damascus closer to size. I only do so much of it with the air hammer then I go to hand hammering. Yes, you can do them quicker and easier but I just choose to do as much as I reasonably can by hand. Even the ones from the mid 1600's here in this country was made by using water mill powered rolling mills and they would do two swords at a time.


In the above photo I am going to the hand hammering. As you can see it has lost a lot of its color notice how the point has lost even a bit more heat. I do not want to forge any lower temperature or less color than what the point is showing. With the body I still have a short amount of hammering time to go at this step. When I measure how to get something done I go by the amount of heats it takes. I can strike this sword maybe 20-25 hits per heat, depending upon how I am feeling etc.  I gage the temperature like a pyromoter, by how much brightness or light it produces. 



Not all forging is done with the regular hammer. Though I do not use "regular" hammers at all. I have an odd mix with my forging skills, I guess because of my travels and what knowledge I have gleaned from where. When I forge I only use Swedish style and Japanese style hammers/ I know, its an odd mix, but that is what I like best, I use the different styles on different steps to get me where I want to go. 
Anyway, in the photo above I am using a wood hammer. This is so I can straighten or shape the blade without distortions. Sometimes you want distortions and sometimes you do not, right at this step I need to move this steel with out a distortion elsewhere.

The blade and handle

This Hanger/cutlass style blade is approx 20 inches long. A cutlass was carried by people in the Navy, Pirates, Merchants of the Sea just about anyone on the water at the time. More times than not is seems as the blades where under 25 inches in length and many of them being 18-20 inch in length simply because they would wield them in tighter places. Hence the length I have on this one. The pattern I set in the damascus blade is the old "Tears of the Wounded" pattern. I have beveled or "house topped" the spine so that it cuts better.
 As a side note, I make myself a personal knife each year and yall are invited to cut with it so you can get the hang of cutting. In 2010 I will make myself a personal sword and again you folks are invited to cut with it at next years show.
Shown in the photo above is the stag that I selected to go with the blade and have the ferrule layed out as well. It will go behind the guard.


Ah, the guard. This one will be made of 416 stainless. I have drawn out a template that I think will work on this handle. I glued it down to the stainless sheet and will saw it out, thats the step that I am about to do now.  I will drill a hole where I have the little rectangle slot layed out and then file it to fit the tang of the knife so the guard will fit  the handle.
Once sawn out then I will start forging to shape what I want the finish shape to be. By me sawing it out like this saves mucho hours. A lot of forging and clean up work goes into this guard yet so yall be patient. As you can see this is a "D" style guard with a knuckle protector in the loose style of a shell, some where lightly fluted most seems were not.

Quenching
or
Hardening the blade

In the above photo I have just brought it up to temperature and headed to the quench tank. I had to place a wooden box to step on in order to quench the blade. Since the blade is about 22 inches long and the oil tank to submerge it in is about 40 inches long I stood a good chance of hitting the side of the quench tank therefore warping the blade even more than it would naturally warp.


Above I am holding the sword in the oil for about 30 seconds to let it harden, you can see the smoke coming off out of the tank.  Thats also why I am wearing long sleeves and there is a fire extingisher handy in case I got it a bit hot and there is a flare up of fire. I nailed the temperture jussssttt right though.



Above I am checking it for straightness then headed to draw the hardness, more later.

The guard from Hades

One of the most frustrating guards to make is the D guard. Any variation of that just adds to the problems. I am seriously considering to like they did in the old days and that is cast them. If I do I might make a short series of pieces and call it quits with this guard. arrrgggg.
In the above photo I am through forging most of the front part. What is so aggravating is with this style there is no use of making a jig to where you can make them all alike as even 1/16 inch of change in length will change everything. You bend more from the front, kick up the back more or less depending upon the slant of the back of the handle. There are so many stinking bends to do on this, when you bend in one place it changes elsewhere. The above photo shows it  with the easy part done and it also gives you some kind of idea as to what it will look like.
Guard bends

This photo is 8 hours of work later on just the guard, the forward part is bent over now and the back is closer. At this stage it gets even tickeyer, if thats a scrabble word, one bend of say ten thousands of an inch will change the front or back as well and not in the same place each time. When this picture was taken, I had 8 more hours on getting the back to fit up just right with keeping the front where it is supposed to be. I had planned on getting it fitted up, sanding it, then do the bend of the shell portion. Though like the orginials I was patterening after, it will be a "loose" shell or just lightly patterned after a sea shell. After all that time, I am still not to full fit up. I was there with full fit up and dang if I did not drop it on the floor. One of the first things you learn in a knife shop is you teach yourself to jerk you hands back when you drop something or one of these days you will grab a knife when you drop it and cut your fingers off. So, when I dropped the guard it sprung it back so I am back to the anvil and vise trying to get the right bend again.
You can see the shell portion and get an idea of where it will bend over the hand. The guard set up like this will protect and catch an opposing sword with the top bend over, it will protect the hand with the "D" portion and the shell will protect the knuckles. You get this thing in your hand and you cannot help but board that ship or get that cannon fired. I will post the photos of the fit up and when I get started on the cupping of the shell.

Cupping of the guard
 


The two above photos show where I have forged the cup in the outter knuckle bow. This sword is patterned after the American blacksmith made cutlass. I found a lot of examples where the cup on the very end was scalloped to evidently represent a sea shell. None that I looked at had any actual fluting, just scalloped on the edges of the cup. This is what I have done. I have never made a sword guard like this. It is amazing how much work went into it and at the same time it was worth it because it feels so well in the hand and you do feel like your hand would have good protection when you raid the other ship. Arrggg me matey.
I have an old swedge block that was used to make spoons and ladles. I used two sizes of the Ladle side to forge the cup of the guard as neither ladle size was matching up to the size of what I had made. Poor folks got poor ways my grandad always said.
Balance is about 2 inches in front of the guard.


Ah ha!!
You probally think I am just horsing around, well you are right. However there is one thing you might have noticed when you see people dueling with swords. You see that back hand up and turned like the I have mine in the upper photograph. Ever wonder why they did this? Well, to futher your eduction, dueling with swords was outlawed so they would often meet at night to keep from getting arrested. They would use the off hand and hold a lattern up high so they could see to duel with. You were considered a Cad if you dropped your lattern hand. Hence it became a habit to hold your lattern hand up with or without a lattern to show you were fair play during a duel. Now, see, you did learn something today after all.  I also wanted to just let you see what the Cutlass looked liked more of a head on type of shot.
What is next on the sword is hand sanding the guard clean which takes hours and hours, then engrave the ferrule with NLT #4 for '09 then some engraving of leaves on the ferrule as well. If I have time I would love to do a bit of line engraving on the bottom of the D portion of the guard, not a lot but just enough to set it off nicely. I have never did English scroll work but am practicing drawing it as I think it would fit well with this piece.
This weekend, the last weekend before the show, I should be able to grind  put the edge on and hand sand the blade, then etch to bring out the Tears of the Wounded pattern of the damascus. I will be doing this during my neck stretching breaks from hand sanding. I am hoping by monday to start doing the engraving on the D portion.

Engraving of the ferrule

Here I have engraved the ferrule with the old Neminski style engraving. He was an old American Engraver that was active from the late 1800's on into the 1900's. He was probally the greatest influence on American engravers in our history.  I thought the old style of leaves he did would look great on this old style cutlass.
The cutlass is a mix of primitive and classy. You will often see my work combine the two, a rough or crude something right next to gold inlays or engraving. I just like that. The guard is early american blacksmith design and style plus I will do, time premitting, some more engraving. I will be working on the blade the rest of the day inbetween the sanding of the guard.

Etched blade

This piece has a lot of shimmer to the "Tears of the Wounded" damascus pattern the blade is made out of. Sorry I just cannot seem to get a good photo because of how I have to take it. I will try a close up tomorrow of just part of the blade so you can see  at least part of the pattern. I just slid the handle on for the photo. Still sanding on the guard till my neck hurts then I run in and engrave on the dagger or I work on this piece. Right now it is near finish sanded, once that is done then I will lay out some engraving to do on the guard. I have in mind a sorta english scroll, which I have never did.

The Guard for the Sword

This is a version of English scroll engraving that I ran across a few weeks ago and liked it. I will try and nail it together tuesday evening and will shoot it slid together right before the bonding time.
English scroll is basically line engraving however most of the time it involved single type lines all put together and more times than not, short lines. This was because of the type of hand chisel they used
preferring it over a chisel struck with a hammer. I tried to stay close to what I was studying as I thought it went well with the Cutlass being as most of the people doing cutlery here got their start in Europe.