Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray Rogers
Nailed or not, it looks good to me. Did the customer particularly order that style of handle? I ask because it looks strange to me - a bowie style blade with a kitchen knife style handle. I know that was not uncommon 200 years ago but modern handle styles have been more sculpted in the last 50 years or so ....
|
No, Ray, that was a major mistake on my part. The tang had quite a bit more meat on it before I turned my back on the forge for one second to long, and I burned the end of it. I was pretty much done forging at that point, but figured I could save it by either going to a hidden tang, or trying to salvage enough to keep the full tang. I decided to try and salvage it, and this is how it came out. Then when I got to shaping the scales, since it didn't match my original design, I was just trying to eyeball something that would be aesthetically pleasing. When I got done, I told my wife the same thing... "I just made this guy a very unique cheese knife!" I was going to swing by the Sunday chat room and get some advice on fixing it, but by then, I was just putting the final touches on everything, and was so angry with myself, I just decided to call it a night.
Took the picture and sent them to the customer, and told him it wasn't exactly like we had discussed, so if he wanted me to do up another one, I would be happy too... He loves it though and actually gave me more than our agreed upon price, so I'm not going to dwell on it... just going to take it as another learning experience. You'd think I would have learned by now, not to take my eyes off the forge when I have metal in it, but nope... Lesson 263, if you put your steel in the forge, that is not the time to walk over to the hose to get a quick drink.
Oh, I was also so flummoxed by my misshapen handle, that I totally forgot to countersink the holes for the pins, so when I peened them over, a couple of them (especially that front one on both sides) came out a little wonky. Gotta learn to let the bad stuff roll off my back, but every day after work, when I had time to work on it, I'd go out to the shop, and just fume about how I kept screwing this one up, and that would stress me out and lead to another screw up.
On the bright side, my wife loved the pattern so much that she asked me to make her one like it, so I'll get another round of practice on the pattern, and the handle... since there's no money involved, it should be a little less stressful... although there are times that my wife is a very demanding task master... Seems like when I'm just making something for fun (friends/family) I don't dread on the mistakes the same way.