I have a friend that is known for his custom knifes. Thought maybe some folks would like to see a really talented guy's work. The pics show one that he is working on when I went by his shop today. Everything including sewing the leather on the sheath is done by him. The 'feather' pattern Damascus blade and etc. is made in his little shop by him. Big hydraulic presses and high temperature ovens are necessary. For the first picture I disassembled the knife. The 2nd shows a close-up of the handle which was cut from a solid piece of steel. The close-up of the walrus tusk handle covers [he paid 700 for a couple of walrus teeth] shows that the gold rivets have not been made for one of them. Yes, it is real gold. The last pic shows Bruce with a special tool and a hammer shaping the head of a small gold rod so it has a properly sized rivet head. I have a small folding knife that he put mammoth ivory handles on as a favor but owning a custom knife like this is way beyond my reach.
I do his nickle plating because I have a small set-up in the basement and can turn it around in a day. So I get to see a lot of his knifes during construction. The Damascus making is a lengthy process that would take a rather long video to cover completely. In most cases a two different types of metal bars are stacked on top of each other and the ends welded so they can't move and the stack of bars are put in a sealed 'can' so air can't get to the metal pieces while it is being brought up to high temperature. The can is then removed from the oven and put in a hydraulic press and smashed out to at least twice the original length. That welds the stack of bars together. Then the bar, now twice as long, is cut in half and stacked together, and then again put in a can and heated and smashed to twice the length. If there were originally 8 bars the doubling would produce 16. Another doubling would produce 32 layers. I believe a lot more people would be doing thing like this sort of thing if there were videos to show the steps.
^^^^^ very cool...I'm always fascinated seeing old school techniques like that but it always makes me wonder how the hell the first guy thought of doing it that way...I suspect it's something that evolves over time or perhaps is even discovered accidentally while performing a different process :smile: