Blog about manufacturing, tools, and machines

I won't write too much about the base, I hope most will be clear from the pictures.

I have a lot of tropical hardwood – jataba and garapa – and it is not feasible to turn all that into knife handles and blocks. Thus I decided to make some high-end cutting boards. For that, I need a drum sander to mate glued surfaces precisely. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to buy one and even if I did, it...

I made this part last year but I forgot to write about it at the time. It is the last part on the outside of the forge.

In a sense, this knife was in the making for over twenty years. For more than twenty years I wanted to make a bowie of this size and more than twenty years ago I drew the picture of an eagle to adorn it. Initially, I intended to etch the picture on the blade but when I made the blade, I...

The last week I finished both sheaths and this time I did not need to make any new tools and everything went pretty much as it should. So today just a few pictures and some words.

I intend to decorate the sheaths for both knives with pictures of birds of prey, so today I will just write shortly about designs and sketches.

This week I got a commission to sharpen and repair some knives and one of them was interesting, and it inspired me to write short musings about sharpening angles, respectively about what angle is correct and when.

Whilst work on knives progressed very slowly these last few weeks, this week unfortunately I could not work on them at all. Only today I had a bit of time and strength, but it was not worth it to start doing something about knives too much. So I did a bit of work on the forge at least.

This week I did not do much, I am currently overwhelmed with other work and knives had to be put somewhat on a backburner. To glue the bigger knife took a bit longer than I expected – a lot of resin soaked into the wood so I had to fill the hollow twice. Thus it took four days instead of two....

Both knives are glued together and the handles are fully shaped. I sanded the surfaces to 400 grit and now I am in the process of applying the finishing layer of epoxy resin.