CKCA Mini Knife Show - The Knifemakers 2012

[Kyle Royer]

Hey John and Steve, Looking good! I wish I was as far along on my knife as you two. Both look nice and I'm looking forward to seeing them in their finished state.

[Steve Culver]

Here's my knife, at the end of work today. All is going well with it.



Gee; I've been working on it for four days and it doesn't look a lot different than the last photo....

[Lin Rhea]

Here is the knife I'm working on. The blade is a hair shy of 8 inches. In this snap shot, it's still scaly just out of the thermocycle. The oxidation shows the pattern. Is has since them been heat treated and is nearly ready for the guard/handle. It will take me a while, so please bear with me.



Somewhere in the hand sanding process.



I better wait for any more pictures. Lin

[Lin Rhea]

[Steve Culver]

She's coming together. The interior mammoth ivory handle slabs have been added. A few more tweaks to get everything adjusted, add the shields and pins, then final finishing before engraving.

I'll start on the sheath tomorrow.

[John M Cohea]

Knives are looking good guys!My project has been at Buddy's studio for a week.Looking forward to seeing what he does with the photo shoot!

[Kevin Jones]

Good John, you are ahead of schedule.
All 7 knives are due to Buddy to on May 1, so about two weeks from now.

[Kyle Royer]

Looking good Lin and Steve! Those are going to be some really nice knives.

I finally finished another project I was working on two days ago and I can focus all my time and thought on my CKCA mini knife show knife. I did the performance testing of the blade yesterday with some 2X4 and treated 2X6 chopping, rope cutting and old, white tail deer antler chopping. It passed the tests I had for it so I can now move on to a little more finish grinding and start hand sanding today.

Looking forward too seeing everyone at the banquet!

Kyle

[Kyle Royer]

Hey Steve, I just noticed something interesting. I was looking at the progress on your knife it looks like the handle you had made was out of blackwood or something else black. Did you make a sacrificial handle to get the frame/wrap formed correctly and then use the mammoth ivory? What's the black handle? I'm really curious about it.

[Steve Culver]

Hi Kyle,

I make a handle core out of micarta. This core is the exact size that the finished handle will be. Once I have the handle frame all fitted, I mill both sides of the micarta core to make room for the actual handle material. You can see in the earlier photos a couple of slots in the micarta. These are where the attachments for the top of the handle frame fit in. I'm taking pictures of this process so I can put together a tutorial on how I build frame handle knives; or something like that.

My knife only needs the handle pins and the shields installed to complete it. The pins, domes and shields are made and ready to fit. I am also working on the sheath right now. I expect all of the construction to be completed in the next week. Then, I have a week to do the engraving. I'm putting in 10 to 12 hours a day to get this knife done. I won't get it to Buddy early, but it won't be late.