Thread: Wootz and damascus knives work in progress

Thanks.

This one I finished yesterday night (I can either sleep or sand. And I'll be grumpy in the morning either way, so usually I choose to be grumpy and being ahead on a knife project.) This is the first knife that I actually like if I would have made it for my personal use. It has a certain alien look about it. Something sinister / not of this world. This design really feels like 'me'

The steel is a san mai I made using Howard Clark's O2L6 steel, 40 layers on each side, and a core of O2. San mai is challenging to work with because I need to hammer it down from a thick bar, while keeping that core central. This means forging equally on both sides. On the back side it went exactly as planned. On the front side , I must not have flattened it equally because in the middle I ground through the Damascus. Still, the error is small enough that the whole looks nice. I purposely left the tang thick and then forged the stock thinner into the blade area. It was a bit difficult to keep everything symmetrical but it turned out the way I wanted. Easy and slow does the trick. I like this style because it makes for a solid and strong connection into the handle while still making a thin blade.

For the handle I chose a block of hybrid stabilized burl cap with colored resin. I picked this block specifically because it have a curving piece of burl that followed the line I wanted the bottom part of the tang to follow. And the textured blue with the red resin is exactly the color that matches the 'vibe' of the knife. The bolster is a piece of black horn.

All in all I am happy with how this turned out. I am figuring out how to make kitchen knives in a style that I like. You'll be seeing more things like this from me in the future.