Hunting knives and related projects

[Von Gruff]

Was supposed to be away hunting today but the property owner had to be away for the day so I will get a look at it later in the week when he is home again. I had the day in the shed instead and decided to make a pair of table knives. My wife prefers a shorter knife to me so made his and hers set and got that rready to Ht. With the SS kitchen knife set foil wrapped I fired up the forge and got them all heat treated. Was a simple thing to keep the heat controlled at the required 1960 degrees for the SS and 1560 for the HC tabe knife set. You will notice a "spare" in with the kitchen set which was a first attempt at the large sicer that I got the bevels wrong on so I reshaped it into a general purpose knife.

[bowhunter]

Von Gruff, I see you like using curley maple too. have you ever used aquafortis? Ive used it on a couple of my handles and it came out pretty sweet Im not sure how to post pictures on here otherwise I would post some.

[Von Gruff]

Von Gruff, I see you like using curley maple too. have you ever used aquafortis? Ive used it on a couple of my handles and it came out pretty sweet Im not sure how to post pictures on here otherwise I would post some.

I havent used that bowhunter. I do like the look af the darker finish it gives thou but I finish all my handles by stting them in a tin of BLO for a couple of hours, wipe of and let dry overnight then they get 4-5 coats of a mix that is equal parts of pure tung oil, alkali refined linseed oil, vegetable turps and marnie varnish. A generous rub on of this mix, leave for 15 minutes then wipe off and leave a few hours between coats, buff and it is done.

[Von Gruff]

Have been abke to get back to the shed after a number of days having to take care of other responsibilities and was able to finish some of the knives that have been on the back burner.
First off I wanted to get some table knives done with the top one being my half of the his and hers eating knives with buffalo horn handles on a blade of 5 1/8 x .09 15N20. Next down is my side plate knife I made from a .03 SS spatula a hidden tang in a desert ironwood handle. The her half of the eating knife set with a 4 1/2 x.09 15N20 blade with white synthetic bench top material and the bottom one is a sideplate knife I made from a piece of an old handsaw blade just .025 thick but the handle was a bit of an experiment having black and orange liners under a blue micarta handle.

[Von Gruff]

I had started to make my side table knife with swamp kauri handles but trying to inlet the tang for the second side had a catastrophic crack so used the desert ironwood instead and am more than happy with the resulting handlle.

This was the SS spatula I used to make my sideplate blade from.

Every so often I have to toss out the used belts

[Von Gruff]

Have got the stanless kitchen set done now so that will be about it for designs in my repitoir I think.
From the left is a 4 1/2 in petty, a 5 in general purpose, a 5 1/2 in chef, a 7 inch chef and the kitchen cleaver

[Von Gruff]

I am about to set of on a three or four week road trip and made a first step today. I will be posting from my phone on the way and as it is easier to just post on the one thread I will be doing so on the Africa hunting forum so if you would like to come along for the drive then do so on this link.

https://www.africahunting.com/threads/road-trip.43266/

[Doon]

Good luck, keep those knives safe as there are plenty of unscrupulous people on your travels.

[rabiddawg]

Safe travels Von Gruff!

Looking forward to your report

[Von Gruff]

Both of us are very tired tonight after about 40 hours on the go. We stayed at the truckstop in Waioiru overnight but the trucks didn't stop so it was a sleepless night and at 6am yesterday morning (fri) we decided to go down to the museam and wait for it to open at 9am and spent the next few hours taking photo's and reading so much of the written text accompanying the displays so have lots to show you over the next few days as I get things sorted out. We left the museam at bout 11.30am and drove down to Wellington but had to wait till 8pm for the first sailing which got us into Picton at near midnight. We drove to Blenhein thinking to get a camp site for the night but there was nothing going si we tried to get a bit of shuteye in the truck but it was no go so I decided to drive on and finally got into our driveway at 2.30 pm with 1052 more km under the wheels. All up I did 4302kn or 2688mile with 657mile on the trop yesterday and today.Will get back to this with a photo spread when we recover a bit but with only being ablr to post 3 at a time here it may be that I simply link you to another forum where I can post a lot more per post.It was a very rewarding trip with four gunshops going to be outets for my knives and the meeting with the NZ G&H mag wil have the article and review held back till the oct nov issue which is the christmas gift sugestion and giveway competition so I will do a couple of knives for that so brand recognition shoulld be helped.

[6.8 klr]

So Very Glad you are back safely....Welcome Home.!