While I may occasionally buy handle material and bar stock online, I grind or forge every blade I make. Some “knife makers” buy a blank off of the internet, handle material off of e-bay, and put it all together and call it a custom knife. This particular knife is as far from that as possible.
This knife blade began its life many years ago as the leaf spring from a 1958 Ford pickup truck. I cut the spring down to a bar 1 inch x 3/8 inch and went to forging on my brother’s Peter Wright anvil. An hour or two later, I had a blade, using only about 4 inches of the original 9 inch long bar. I normalized three times, then did some grinding to clean up the bevels and the profile. I heat treated the knife in my kiln, soaking at 1500 degrees for ten minutes then quenching in mineral oil, then tempering two one hour cycles at 450 degrees.
This handle material is from a juniper burl stump I carried out of the mountains in Ruidoso, New Mexico, from approximately 33 degrees, 20 minutes, 58.42 seconds North and 105 degrees, 41 minutes, and 29.45 seconds West for you GPS users who want to see exactly where this stuff came from.
The guard and pin are copper, to match the reddish color of the burl wood. This is perhaps the finest wood I have ever personally harvested.
Written by : Jason
