Thread: What are you working on?

Last achieved work (order, one of my last two pieces of light tortoise)

Beautiful blade and pleasant work, very soothing :-)

That blade has beautiful lines - very elegant. Tortoise scales really complement that.

It is fitting that you used hand tools to craft the scales just as the original artisan would have worked.

It’s a very rewarding way to work, and it helps to save more of the raw materials

Originally Posted by Thaeris

It’s a very rewarding way to work, and it helps to save more of the raw materials

It is also a much cleaner and therefore healthier way to work with most materials.

Just a quick update on my Packwood.

I thought this would be much harder to hone, but I got into a rhythm with it last night and the edge came in really nice. I really enjoyed honing this one, it was nice to get the stone back in my hand for the rolling X instead of having it flat on a table. I've been doing blades with curves for so long I have a really hard time keeping the spine on the stone with the straight edges. I noticed the edge did not react the same as my hollows when doing hair tests. I usually get some grabbing at 4K when tree topping arm hair and start popping hairs with the 8K. This one didn't start grabbing until 8K and wouldn't pop hair till I started finishing on my strops. I did a dry WTG pass on the back of my hand and was amazed. The back of my hand is almost bald because I had to keep trying it. It was so smooth and effortless, the hair just fell away. Really looking forward to the shave tomorrow. If I like the shave tomorrow I'll finish off the pins and post it up in the restores section. If not I'll go to one layer of tape and see where it takes me.

Thanks to all for the advice and comments as I worked through this project, it was very helpful and appreciated.

Oh, and I got to the wedge-o-matic pages in this thread. Now I get it Reminded me of muffler bearings when I was a mechanic. Glad I wasn't wearing my gullible hat that day.

Picked this up at FleaBay--




NOTE: It had a crack at the toe but I failed to take pics of using Bogwood dust and super glue to make the repair. Sorry--

Anyway I unpinned it, sanded the horn scales to 800 grit, then used some black leather dye inside and out. Let that dry over night.



Then I put them in an unsealed sandwich sized Ziploc bag with Neatsfoot oil, then into the vacuum chamber and drew a full pull and waited for the small bubbles to subside. I then removed them from the chamber and the bag, drip dried them then used paper towels to remove the excess and then them dry on paper towels.

While the scales were sitting, I cleaned up the blade with 600 grit greaseless and then some Dialux Green followed by some Mothers Polish.

Assembly was with Austin's reproduction Beehive washers and brass rod.



Honing was Naniwa 1K, Norton 4K, Norton 8k and Zulu Grey all with slurry then clear water. After clear water on the Zulu I used a couple of squirts of Windex for the last few strokes.

Nice shaver.

Leather dye, never used that before. Interesting!

Originally Posted by sonnythehooligan

Leather dye, never used that before. Interesting!

Don't let a drip of it get on your clothes, hands, table, flooring, table tops etc as the stuff seems to stain anything it comes in contact with and is quite resistant to wanting to come off.

This is what I used:

A black sharpie works too for touch up. Let dry then buff with metal polish or a buffer.

[QUOTE=cudarunner;1871492]Picked this up at FleaBay--

Anyway I unpinned it, sanded the horn scales to 800 grit, then used some black leather dye inside and out. Let that dry over night.

Then I put them in an unsealed sandwich sized Ziploc bag with Neatsfoot oil, then into the vacuum chamber and drew a full pull and waited for the small bubbles to subside. I then removed them from the chamber and the bag, drip dried them then used paper towels to remove the excess and then them dry on paper towels.

While the scales were sitting, I cleaned up the blade with 600 grit greaseless and then some Dialux Green followed by some Mothers Polish.

Assembly was with Austin's reproduction Beehive washers and brass rod.

Honing was Naniwa 1K, Norton 4K, Norton 8k and Zulu Grey all with slurry then clear water. After clear water on the Zulu I used a couple of squirts of Windex for the last few strokes.

Nice shaver.

Looks really good! Well done!