Paring Knives for 2012

I have made quite a few smaller knives over the years & have made knives I considered to be paring knives...but were really more like small utility sized blades in the end.
Being that I am 6'6" tall and have large hands, a small knife to me can be a larger knife to someone else.
A friend and collector who uses my chef knives in his kitchen every day order a paring knife & knowing that he already had what I considered to be a paring knife in his using collection I really had to come up with a "Real Paring Knife".  I am grateful for Scott, for his support of my work, and for inspiring me to create these fine little knives.

Using an existing paring knife design, I morphed it into what I considered a classic paring knife style. Originally I thought of doing some inlay on these to hide the center pin, but decided against it.

These are all made out of 3/32" thick 1095 and are among the very first stock reduction knives I have made to date. Not much material to bother forging on these  & I was able to make a more consistently repeatable design as a result. Overall length is approximately 8.25" with the blades being about 4.25" of cutting edge.

Scott is getting the one with the beautiful Spalted Desert Ironwood, the one in the vintage Orange paper Micarta is coming to The Gathering with me & the other two (one in Ebony and the other in vintage black-stripe Micarta) will be coming to the California Custom Knife Show.

Below are images going backwards in time to the beginning of the concept drawing I did for these paring knives, to a shot of them just after the hardening process, to the finished knives.

I hope you enjoy the images.

-DON:)