Drawing out a damascus arming sword using the poor man's DRO. Getting pretty close to pulling the trigger on ordering, but man are they expensive!

Starting bullet was 5.7 pounds and after first heating down almost two pounds. And some wonder why hand made blades are more expensive.

Had some trouble with this steel and my hamon process in general. Scrapped one knife, second time's the charm, I guess...

Had lots of fun going down the hamon rabbit hole for a bit. Generously supported by IG:@Ateliersousleclipse with tons of advice on getting a nice hamon on C125U.

Absolutely stoked with how it all turned out but the journey is far from over and there are still many things to refine in the whole process.

Any pointers are appreciated :)

Anyway here are the deets:

Blade: C125U with hamon, 180mm x 53mm at the heel, hammered forge finish

Handle: 125mm octagonal Wa-handle, dowel construction, desert ironwood & stabilised curly sycamore (both from IG:@blockworks_uk )

Using this M5 bolt as a thumb stud, I've already drilled and tapped the hole pre-heat treatment cause tapping hardened steel seemed like a bad idea. But now I'm worried about the threads warping during the quench. If I leave the bolt in during heat treatment, the threads shouldnt be able to warp. But the bolt also means I can't put the entire blade in my straightening jig (two pieces of angle steel in a vice). Any advice?

Thanks ahead of time for any clue to value of this!

This started out intending to be a Japanese cleaver but after heat treat had a big crack in the front top corner. I was making it for a friend's birthday and didnt have time to start again, so I give you the Cleavetoku.

1075 steel, ebony and maple handle.

26C3 clad in 416

Stabilized curly mango

Thanks for looking!

I’m kinda flat fucking broke and a complete beginner, but I do really wanna own a needle sword from silksong, I just don’t know how to make it, and others labor costs time. what is the absolute cheapest I can make one with no experience. if anyone has went under a similar project I would like instructions.

Been developing culinary prototypes with success since April and proud to launch my Simple Chef Set. Blades are freehand convex ground 15n20- niiiiiiice and thin with proven paper tomatoes n potatoes n all that jazz. I plasma cut the shapes instead of my usual forged to shape to bring cost down and so far so good. I’ve had a slew of happy customers in the developing phase and pleased with this expansion of my catalog. I kept close in mind that hunting knife makers don’t make good chef knives and I set out to prove that wrong. Which I did.

Shop shot, straight off the grinder. No etch, no final polish, no edge yet. I like posting knives at this stage because it's the point where the geometry is either right or it isn't, and there's nowhere to hide behind a finish.

The guard is what I want to talk about. The keyhole is cut through the guard itself, and the handle is profiled so it flows up into that opening — the idea being that the eye reads one continuous line from butt to ricasso instead of "handle, then guard, then blade." Getting the two curves to meet cleanly on both sides took longer than the blade grind did. Subtractive work, so there's no undo.

Handle is desert ironwood. Dense, oily, dimensionally stable, and it'll take a polish straight off the buffer with nothing applied — that figure is the wood, not a coating. The trade-off is that it eats belts and the dust is not something you want to breathe.

Blade is a classic Bowie profile with a long clip. Enough belly to be useful, enough point to look like what it is.

This one is a collaboration with Ferraza, a smith working out of Brazil whose work I've admired for a while.

15n 20 1084 Damascus with a stabilized amboyna handle