California Custom Knives: September 2011

Friday, September 16, 2011

Happy Fish Camp Knife #2

A new Happy Fish Camp Knife Joins the School!

This one went to Mark Aiton. He was a real pleasure to work with and actually was one of the first interested in the Happy Fish Knives after seeing the very first one created.

This Beauty exhibits some very fine dark desert ironwood that has been fully contoured and detail carved. Domed and polished bronze pins secure the ironwood to the tapered tang.
OAL is 11.75" with a 6 & 7.8" blade.

Click HERE to read more about the details & history of the Happy Fish Knives

Perfection and Beauty

What is a Hand Made Knife?

I specialize in making Heirloom Quality Knives.
They are made by hand.
This means that, while I do now own a few power tools compared to the first 7-years when I had virtually little to speak of, other than a hand drill and then a drill press; I now own a grinder and a power hammer; and yet, the knives are still created with hand-held practices, using fairly simple tools for the most part.
All of my knives are designed and created by me. I am creating some stock reduction knives, but other than that....
Each blade is forged hot on an anvil to 90% of the shape that it will be when finished. This takes Skill and lots of attention to accomplish. Adding in a TW-90 grinder helped with post stock reduction heat treatment, a process that has allowed me to refine the edge geometry on my chef knives to a place where I am very pleased with the results.
Then each knife is tested for edge-flex and toughness. Some of the testing phase can be seen in the banner image above, where after the edge-flex test I chop on very hard wood.
If the knives still shave hair after this testing then they are good to go!
Both of the two chef knives in that banner image passed with flying colors and will be cleaned-up and have handles placed on them. And eventually go into the kitchens or campsites of the new owners.
Knives made my hand are beautiful!