Well the end of the year brought some serious changes in my life and I gave myself about a month to reflect on life, love and the business of teaching and making knives.
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One thing I did manage to get done was to have a bit of the wonderful Maple I had stashed stabilized and dyed. Stabilization for those who do not know is a process of taking a fairly light and porous wood and submerging it in a thing acrylic resin under a vacuum, thus impregnating it with a material that "stabilizes" it.
I had this maple wood but found it to be a bit too light in weight for my knives, but the stabilization process results in about a 20% weight-gain..... AND you can dye the wood too making the grain really pop, and the overall joy and uniqueness of a knife that is made with this type of material on the handle can really be striking. I posted an image of a Damascus slicing knife I did to illustrate how great this can look on a knife.
Anyhow, time to get back to it.
AND what a colorful year it will be!
