Well for the past 3 years I have wanted to do this but it just didn't work out until this year. Some years ago I acquired alot of tools from my dad that were his dads. My grandfather spent his whole life in aviation. Starting out as a kid working/living at an airport for room and board to keep a hanger clean, eventually becoming a mechanic. He owned a couple small airports over is life. He owned some pretty unique planes. He had one that was called a Balerio, the 7th one ever built. It was a wooden frame wrapped with heavy canvas. He also owned the 1st Bi-Plane that Beachcraft ever built. To me that is the most special as this was the first plane I ever flew in. My dad and grandpa took me and my twin brother for our first flight in this plane when we were only 2 weeks old. Even still have the old leather bound flight log that he recorded the flight for us in. He also worked on the the SR-71 Blackbird in its early years.
What I originally intended to do was to make a knife for my dad, 3 brothers and 1 sister. BUT, my wife asked if I was going to make our sons one. Then she said why not make one for each of your dads grandkids. With that being said what started as 6 knives turned into 16.
Well amongst his tools were some old files. All made in USA files. Very good steel. A friend of mine as most of you know as Ragnarok Forge (Clay Walker) offered up to help me by letting me use his forge and big grinder. He annealed the files then I went to work grinding/cutting out the shapes. On all of these I did stock removal. After all that was done I again used his forge and normalized, hardened the edges and then we tempered them. After this was done I went to work doing the final sanding and I etched them in white vinegar to give it a patina. Then I went to work on attaching the wood scales and once done made sheaths for them. The grandkids all got neck knives. My dad and big kids got BIG knives, 4 of these are typical hunting type knives and 2 of them ( for me and my twin ) are kind of a bird and trout/boning type knives. I still need to add the scales to mine.
Hope you enjoy. Just wanted to share. Here are some pics. One of the knives isn't in the pics, ooops
Thanks again Clay for your help, instruction and time helping me on this.
Brock
Topic: Just finished-To me xtra special 16 knives (Read 1169 times)
