Luke made me this camp axe in trade for something worth much less. It is nice to get the better end of the deal. He forged the head from a ball-peen hammer and got the handle from a man selling “2nds” at the local flea market- with the bad knot cut out when it was resized/profiled this beautiful piece of curly hickory came into its own. The head is angled to cut and split wood with equal facility.
Also, Luke used an one of the old methods to temper the axe so that both the edge and the butt are hardened and the metal softens by degrees to the middle. It was tricky, I hear—would have liked to have seen it.
My addition to this project was sanding the handle to 320 and 00 steel wool. A couple of coats of tung oil finish and [French word], a beautiful and functional tool.
Luke manning the booth at the Slow Food Atlanta festival last weekend…
Here we are again at the market with our plexiglass liability shield. Kids can look without touching. A good idea brought to us by Jan at the Athens Farmer’s Market.
Here is a commission that I am finishing up.
The blade is an old Nicholson file, and the guard is recycled brass. The took 40 layers of coffee bag to build up—because the knife design required a hidden tang.
While I was taking these pictures, I dropped the knife on accident point-down in my concrete driveway, and nothing happened to the blade. The point didn’t break. Though I don’t regularly mistreat knives, I am glad to now that they can take the abuse.
I am told that the middle of Moby Dick has a section of about 40 pages or so where he describes the butchering of a whale. Reading Goldstein’s book through the second time in 1984 might be something similar.
I have posted and posted on the kitchen utility…This knife is made of the VW torsion spring. A brass bolster. Copper wire for the pins. And the Jittery Joe’s coffee bag handle. Luke took a great picture.
Now, at least, I am adopting Hemingway.
~VW
Had a great time at a meeting of the Georgia Custom Knifemaker’s Guild this morning hosted at the shop of Andy Roy (Fiddleback Forge) and Dylan Fletcher in Cumming, GA. A talented and friendly group, I am very happy to join their ranks today to further the knifemaking art here in Georgia. Check them out on the Knife Network Forum HERE or the guild website HERE.
~LS
It started with a coffee bag.
Added a press, wax paper and some canoe resin…
Sanded and put a finish on it—Luke had the right kind of glue so he did the honor (or work). And the handle worked out a little something like this:
I like how the various layers of the bag reveal themselves in the contours of the handle. The dark splotches are the letters—though probably not the ones on the bag above.
Then I made the sheath out of (again) cut-offs from Dad’s shop.
Wrote the letter of explanation.
Took a couple of quick pictures of the knife and headed out to give it to my friend.
Luke was really invaluable in the process of getting this one out in the shape that it is in. I will give myself credit for stopping when I hit a wall and driving up 441 to ask some advice or learn how to deal with a problem rather than breaking out the 36-grit solution.
I am indebted to Luke for his wisdom and craftsmanship. I am glad that the PD (Public Domain) stamping—which was originally tipping my hat to its owner—became part of the story of the making of the blade itself.
-vw
This is a knife that I am making for a friend of mine. For it, I will use one of the first batch of coffee-bag handles. The real trick in making handle making is lining the pin holes up—hence the drill press vise and the clamp. (I added two more clamps before actually drilling). The glue-up went well which meant the holes were straight.
I am looking forward to seeing how the knife sands out. Should be pretty interesting.
On a more philosophical note, the PD on this knife stands for Public Domain. My friend who will eventually own the knife is working to use this principle in the cooking world. Luke and I don’t really have any trade secrets, just stories. We talk to each other and learn from other generous people around us. Carl Rechsteiner, Rick Lowe, Andy Roy, and John Costa of the Georgia Knife Maker’s Guild have been particularly helpful and welcoming to Luke and me. They are all making great blades. Check them out.
Our materials also come from friends to whom we are indebted. Charlie (from Jittery Joe’s) gave us the bags and my friend David provided the saw blade from his farm in Farmington, GA.
In my own life, I tend to want to protect knowledge rather than share it openly. But how can I live well without taking up a posture of gratitude and humility? Maybe foolish and naive, but I think I have seen enough of the other side to know where that road goes. I am thankful for all the people in my life who practice transparency much better than I do.
~VW
My friend Charlie Mustard down at the Jittery Joe’s roastery in downtown Athens generously provided a few coffee bags for an experiment: making handle materials out of fabric and resin. And it worked. By layering bag and resin into a press, I was able to make the test-block above. Now we can make something from local materials that before we had to source at a significant cost. This material will be replacing the similar Micarta(TM) handle material that we have been using.
This material is waterproof, resilient, and almost bomb-proof. I don’t know that I could break through this piece with a hammer. Perfect for the kitchen.
As I was thinking through the possible applications here, the most exciting for me was that we can now make handles out of any fabric: goodwill find, tweed couches, Winger t-shirts, whatever. Late in coming was the idea that I could make a knife from one of my grandfather’s old files and then make a handle out of one of his old pairs of jeans or work shirts. The possibilities here go on and on. Figuring out that we can make this handle material on our own is a very interesting step in helping our knifemaking to be as local and sustainable as it can be. Our ability to do this now also further invests us in the story of our knives.
-vw
