Here's my story and i'm sticking to it
I started playing around with forging back in March of 2005 and got motivated and bought real gear after meeting the ABS guys at Blade 2005. I went to the Fall Piney Woods Hammer-In and got to talk some more with Bill Moran, Jerry Fisk and others and got REALLY motivated. Then January came along and a new business venture presented itself and i stopped completely until mid-October of this year. As it stands, of the 75-80 projects i had started previous to this one, all except for 4 ended up in the local landfill, and the 4 were kept for dentimental and/or technical reasons....first knife that looked ok and took an edge, and a couple where I didn something cool....screw on buttcap, first ferrule, bluing job, etc. The are all flawed. Most of my screwups happen, as you might imagine, on the grinder, with the lions share being plunge cut faux pas'. With this knife, i decided to lay off the grinder after basic rough grinding and do it by hand......so after 3-4 days of spare time night sanding up to 220, this puppy, while not perfect, is acceptable and ready for clip grinding,stamping, final normalizing and heat treat. The blade is 8 1/2 long and 1/4 thick at the ricasso. The steel is some of Dan Hanson's magic W2. Opinions, anyone? Sorry for the bad pic, but my foto-graffy skillz are suspect at best
I will be putting a coffin handle of some kind of exotic wood on it....haven't decided which one yet....I have about 8 different species to choose from.