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Description: This is my all-time favorite knife. I named it Pralines & Cream. I used a forged (as opposed to ground) Damascus blank from Damascus USA in the shape I like best -- a sweeping arc with a drop point and a nice tapered tang. I asked Miles Martin up in Alaska to pick me out some mammoth ivory in a honey or almond color cause I wanted the metal to be copper. The ivory has tiny traces of that characteristic mammoth-blue. The hilt and bolster are copper, and the spacers are cocobolo. It is 8 1/2" long with a 4" blade, weighs eight ounces. Yes, I know copper and brass tarnish faster than the nickel-silver I sometimes use, but this particular copper tarnishes in a gorgeous way that makes it look like it's being heated. This knife has a wonderful balance and feel to it, and smoothness that my photography can't capture.
Description: This knife is very different from any of the others. It evolved step-by-step with no plan at all. It glories in its flaws. All the metal in the knife is from a single piece of 1" steel cable, heated and fluxed and twisted and pounded with a hammer on a railroad track anvil, ground and shaped and polished and etched in acid. The guard and pommel are end pieces of the cable that did not quite weld, and I heated them yellow-hot and dipped them in molten brass, shaped and polished and heat-blued them to bring out the contrast with the bright brass. I sent pictures of them to a well-known maker of cable Damascus knives, and he told me how to keep from getting holes in the steel when I dipped it in brass. But this is exactly what I wanted.
Description: This knife is made from 52100 steel, the steel used for ball bearings. It is possibly the most valued of knife steels. Following Ed Fowler's method of heat treatment as closely as possible, this blade was brought to critical temperature and edge-quenched in 160-degree oil, left in the freezer for 24 hours, then heated and quenched and frozen again, then quenched a third time. Following that, it was tempered at 400 degrees for two hours and left to cool, three times. After the heat treatment, wet-sanded down to a 6000 grit mirror finish. And it is sharp. The handle is hippo ivory and web turquoise, with nickel/silver fittings. It has a 4 1/2" blade and is 9 3/4" overall.
Description: Hope Louis Tiffany's heirs don't sue me. Inspired by Tiffany's stained glass lamps. About 24" x 10" x 4" deep. Purple heart box, butterfly of African ebony and pink ivory, leaf of yellow heart, black walnut and mora. I'm not too pleased with these photos -- the box is nicer. Represents a good month's hard labor. Dividers are left loose till the owner decides where they should be. If at all. PS -- Sold it for the price I was asking, the day I finished it!
Description: This is probably the best of my knives so far. It was cut from a billet made by Alabama Damascus, 416 layers of the best steels -- 52100 and high nickel steels like 203E and 15N20. Quenched three times and tempered at 350F. The fossil material is slices of woolly mammoth tooth I bought from Miles Martin in Alaska. I had put off for months cutting the mammoth tooth pieces for fear I'd make something I didn't like later or ruin them.... and I'm very happy with this now that I've finally done it. It is 9 3/4" overall length, with a 5" blade. This is a shadow box knife, though it's as hard and tough as any working knife. It comes with a sheath that hasn't been designed yet.
Thank you for the kind words, Travis. This is what I'm going to do when I grow up.