The Beast Has Arrived

[James Combs]

Some of you may recall the custom knife I made and posted about back in November (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?236319-My-First-Ever-Custom-Made-Knife). One of my last posts in that thread was a pic of a "beastly" looking antler piece. Well here is the completed "Beast".

It uses an American made Damascus steel blade(Jantz Supply - Snake River blade) I wanted to shorten the ugly antler extensions but the customer wanted it UGLY and that is what he got although I have to say it's a fairly nice looking ugly.:cool: Assembled length is right at 10 inches.

Blade Mfr. Blade Data:
Jantz Item# JD722 - The overall length is 9 3/8"(I had to cut about half the tine off), blade length is 4 3/4"(I measured 5-1/8") long and 1 1/8" wide, 5/32" thick.

Hardware:
"German Silver"(aka nickle-silver) finger guard and pommel, imported from Ukraine

Antler:
Whitetail Deer, customer supplied.

This is the teaser pic I posted in November.
Edit:(OOPS, had to leave this one out, It put me over the 8 limit, but you can see it in the original post.)

Obverse(Display side - something new I learned about knives)
326819

Reverse side.
326820

Close up of finger guard and makers mark.
326822

Other details.
326821 326823 326818

Make/Assembly Details:
326825326824

C&C appreciated. Please ask if you have questions, I will answer to the best of my knowledge, this is only my second knife.
Thanks for looking.

[Jim Belair]

Wow, that's quite a knife.

Excuse my ignorance but would you expect the customer to use this knife (for ...) or is it purely decorative?

[Ted Calver]

It's an impressive looking beast, James. Kinda has a dragon feel to it. I bet the customer loves it. Good job.

[Jim Koepke]

Very nice work of art.

jtk

[James Combs]

Wow, that's quite a knife.

Excuse my ignorance but would you expect the customer to use this knife (for ...) or is it purely decorative?
Thanks for posting Jim. My customer is giving the knife to a friend as a gift and I am not sure what the friend will use it for but most likely it will be for display "mostly?). The entire story is that my friend's, friend's, father is the one who got the deer with the antler used on both knives. My friend had the knife made for his friend as a memorial to his friends father who recently passed on. Sorry about all the friendliness here but don't know how else to say it.:o One of the reasons I wanted to shorten the smaller antler horns was so that it could be carried but my friend insisted that they stay so, as I said most likely it will be for display only.


It's an impressive looking beast, James. Kinda has a dragon feel to it. I bet the customer loves it. Good job.
Thanks Ted, yes my customer was very impressed, almost to the point of be ecstatic, he loved it. By the way it is odd that you mentioned "dragon feel to it". I had the same thought as well and it also reminded me of a flint-lock gun. When I do something like this I sometimes do a photoshop version to get an Idea of what it might look like. Check these photoshop versions out.

This was the initial photoshop version I provided to the customer.
326859

I had done one similar but used this dragon head at the finger guard but I can't seem to locate the pic, I had opened the dragons mouth in my photo-editor and had the blade coming out of the mouth like a long tongue. The antler was the dragons neck. It looked cool but I couldn't figure out a way to open the mouth for real on the nickle silver casting.:(
I326860


Very nice work of art.
jtk
Thanks Jim, "art" pretty much says it about this one. Not very practical even though I feel that it is very well made.:D

[Frederick Skelly]

Nice work JD!

[Pat Barry]

That's one sweet looking knife. Very nicely done. I know a ton of folks who would want one of those. Could you tell me what the hardware cost is for something like that?

[James Combs]

That's one sweet looking knife. Very nicely done. I know a ton of folks who would want one of those. Could you tell me what the hardware cost is for something like that?

Hi Pat, the blade was $100+ at Jantz, the guard & pommel totaled $30+ on ebay.

[Bruce Haugen]

Did you do the grinding? Nice etch, nice handle, nice knife!

[James Combs]

Did you do the grinding? Nice etch, nice handle, nice knife!
Hi Bruce, if you are referring to grinding/shaping the blade, no, I am not into making blades plus it came pre-etched. All I had to do to the blade was clean off the loose etching black, electro-etch my logo, sharpen it a little, and cut the tine a little shorter. If you mean grinding elsewhere then the answer is yes. I used a Dremel and sander to shape the antler and flush the brass pin. If you take a look at my first one (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?236319-My-First-Ever-Custom-Made-Knife&highlight=) which I think of as "Beauty":

Here is a pic and link. (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?236319-My-First-Ever-Custom-Made-Knife&highlight=)
326880 (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?236319-My-First-Ever-Custom-Made-Knife&highlight=)

It required grinding and fitting of the bolsters and pins as well as shaping the antler, but again the blade came as you see it sans the logo.
Thanks for commenting

[Mike Cherry]

That's impressive! I am humbled by your attention to detail,sir.

[James Combs]

That's impressive! I am humbled by your attention to detail,sir.
Thanks Mike, I don't consider myself a knife maker, more of a jack-of-all-trades but I do try to do it right what ever I do. As to making knives I did enjoy it and was thinking of trying to make one using the "material removal method"(grind a piece of metal to shape), I don't see myself forging blades but I think I can grind a shape from existing flat stock. I have an old slightly bent lawn mower blade I was thinking of seeing what I could do with it, it should be pretty good steel. If I try it I will post the results.

Thanks again to everyone for looking and for posting.

[Bruce Haugen]

Before you put a lot of work into grinding that knife blade, try to find out what type of steel is in that lawn mower blade. If you posted this on a knife making forum you'd be flooded with advice not to do it but rather to buy a chunk of known steel. Lawn mower blades can be made from low carbon steel and thus may not be able to be heat treated properly.

If you want to use found steel, try to find an old Chevy leaf spring. The 50's and 60's era springs were made from 5160. Old files were often made from W-1.

[James Combs]

Before you put a lot of work into grinding that knife blade, try to find out what type of steel is in that lawn mower blade. If you posted this on a knife making forum you'd be flooded with advice not to do it but rather to buy a chunk of known steel. Lawn mower blades can be made from low carbon steel and thus may not be able to be heat treated properly.

If you want to use found steel, try to find an old Chevy leaf spring. The 50's and 60's era springs were made from 5160. Old files were often made from W-1.
Thanks for the advice Bruce. I will see what I can find. BTW, if I were to find and old leaf spring, do you have any idea how I would remove the curvature outside of reheating and straightening? Not really interested in getting into forging and or heat-treating. I had thought earlier of leaf springs but decided that the lawn mower blade was already straight and I already had it in hand.

Edit:
As an aside, I did join a knife forum but I have not posted anything, it use's v-bulletin the same as this one but they don't let you post pics unless you are a contributing($$) member. I mostly just use it for gathering how-to info.