All About Pocket Knives

I don’t know whether you would call this custom knife or a customized knife. The blade is from a Jantz Supply. Jantz Damascus series blades are made by Alabama Damascus and are combination of 5160, 203E, 52100 & 15n20 fold that into 416 layers and heat-treated to 58-60 RC.
Damascus does present some challenges, especially when etching my name on the blade.

I also made the sheath. Jantz supply does not have the sheath fits this knife so I had to figure out the sheath myself. The more sheaths I make, the more comfortable I am doing them, although I still need some improvement on my technique. Just like knife repair and knife making, sheath making is a skill that’s learned from practice.

I thought I would post this for your comments and observations.
I appreciate the feedback you is provide.
Thank you,
Dale

Sorry for the indoor pictures, it just wasn't happening outside when I took these.

WOW!!!!!!

Yeah, there has to be a label that fits the middle ground between "Custom" and "Customized". Maybe "Semi-Custom"???? Even though I'm not a big fan of Damascus, I can appreciate it and what you've turned out looks good. It's a good job on the sheath too. Kinda fits that "in the middle" genre of the knife.

I have heard of a term known as "mid-tech", where-in some makers take already-finished blades, and then take them the rest of the way to finished. I guess i would consider this mid-tech.

Oh yeah, awesome work, by the way!

Glenn may be on the right track, I hadn't heard of the term "mid-tech".

I guess I think of it as a customized knife, much in the way I would think of a Yellowhorse creation. Although now that I think about it, I believe most people do use the term Yellowhorse Custom when referring to his knives. So now I'm just thoroughly confused...

Either way you did a right fine job on it!!


WB

Nice looking knife Dale!

Dale,
Great work! The scales look fantastic! Did you buy the blade profiled, ground, and heat treated? That is how I understood it. Good job.
My parents live close to the Alabama Damascus manufacturing center. I have been there a time or two. Usually leave salivating. Great looking stuff they have.

Glad you posted this. Keep up the good work.

Tony

Thanks guys, I appreciate your critique and encouragement. I guess this is sort of the mid-level custom, or perhaps “semi-custom.” I’ve already had two right shoulder surgeries and 20+ hand and wrist surgeries and given that I’m 66 years old I’m not about to start swinging a hammer and forging blades, as much is I might like to. This is as close as I get to making a Damascus blade.

Tony_Wood wrote: Did you buy the blade profiled, ground, and heat treated? That is how I understood it.

Good question Tony –
When the blade arrives from Jantz it has been profiled, ground, heat-treated, sharpened and etched. The etching part is what caused me the most difficulty, I had to be extremely careful not to get any glue on the Damascus, or anything else because it would be really difficult to get out. I also couldn’t touch the Damascus with a sander or a buffer, I know because I tried this on the handle, knowing it would be covered up, so I did some experimentation. The easiest course seemed to be fit the handles precisely, never allowing the sander to touch the tang. I suppose that’s fine if you have a machine shop with a water jet cutter or a laser cutter but it’s nearly impossible to do by hand. I attach the handles with corbys and held the handle in place while I fitted it. I ground the stag to fit the tang, which of course remove the etching on the edge of the tang. I knew I was going to have to re-etch the blade anyway so I didn’t worry.

When you order the guard that goes with this knife it is Damascus but they send a nickel silver pin to attach the guard. So I had this nice looking Damascus guard with a shiny nickel silver pin holding it on which didn’t look right to me.
When I had everything fit perfectly and my logo etched on the blade, I removed the handle and re-etched the entire blade.
If you’re interested in etching Damascus, Ed McCaffrey has a good video on YouTube about etching Damascus and he even shows how he made his etching tanks. I made in etching tank in the plastic pipe and used ferric chloride to etch. Ed uses TSP to neutralize the ferric chloride but other videos suggested baking soda, which is what I used. It seemed to work quite nicely.
After the blade was attached, neutralized, cleaned and waxed I then attach the handle, (I did not wax the sides of the tang because I was going to use glue). I anticipated that I might want a slower setting epoxy than I normally use so I used 30 minute epoxy and corbys to attach the handles.

After allowing the glue to fully cure for 24 hours, actually I think I let it cure 36 hours, I ground the corbys down and polished the ends and completed the finish work to the knife and then I built the sheath.
I was very pleased to get a nice finish on the sheath since I started with very light leather; I dyed it with black Lincoln leather dye, polished it with black Lincoln shoe polish, used a halfway spit shine technique of applying the second coat of polish with my finger and with water. It’s far from a Marine Corps spit shine but it looks much better than unpolished leather.

Thanks for looking and thanks for your comments.