bladegrinder

I had a friend ask to replace the handle on an old Case knife his dad gave him, I dated it to 1932-1940. after I replaced the handles I made this blade protector for it. the lettering came out a little wonky but I rarely use them, I guess I should have practiced a little first. the blade is 12" long. I replaced the broom stick wood with Bocote and 3/16" brass pins. here's the handles that were on it...

Great work Handstitched, congrats!

A skull with a red eye. Bad news.

Rodger that! I lived in Clearwater for over 30 years near the beach and always hoped the big one didn't hit us. I moved to the panhandle last year to 30 acres of woods. hurricane Michael's eye passed my place here by 15 miles and devastated my property, it looked like a nuke went off. I'm still cutting downed trees in the woods and have lots of widow maker leaners all thru the woods. I've spoken with some friends down there today, some are prepared others don't think much of it. I told them if they saw what happened to Mexico beach and north in the panhandle they BEST be very worried. my area was out of electricity for over two weeks with every pole on every road snapped. I'm afraid the Tampa Bay and Clearwater area are about to see catastrophic damage that's never been seen there before.

Great work! I have the same gun but I like the one that holds with out the scope.

Here's the close up pic taken with a real camera, you can see where I need improvement. I dyed the leather with Fiebings light brown dye diluted 5 to 1 with Fiebing's dye reducer. after it dried I applied two coats of Fiebing's tan coat.

That sheath looks awesome, great work garyak.

I have to take some pictures of knife sheaths in a day or two with a real camera, I'll get one of the holster too and post it here. the better picture will show I need to work on my carving and beveling.

Thanks folks...

I normally make knife sheaths but I want to start making holsters too now, so I made this for my Ruger Vaquero .45 with a 7.5" barrel. I need to work on my carving and beveling but this is the first one I ever made and I think it came out OK. Thanks for looking, so here's the Ruger... And here's the holster...

It's 10 x faster that's for sure. while I was on my quest for a machine for knifemakers the Cowboy and Cobra kept coming up as probably the best with really no complaints from anyone, the Tippman Boss on the other hand seemed to be a mixed bag. one knifemaker I know could never get it to work right and sold it a few months after he bought it. I've also read where some folks loved theirs and never had an issue but I also read of a lot of folks that had issues on and off and others that had issues every time they used it, and having to do something to the machine to get it to run right. So when I weighed the pros and cons of what I had researched about it I took it off my list. when I got the Cowboy 4500 I was naturally a little apprehensive using it at first but after a lot of practice I feel comfortable with it now and have had zero issues with it, all screw ups so far have been my fault.

Being a knifemaker, when I started searching out a machine I searched knifemaker forums and it seemed I found quite a few people saying the Tippman boss can be really finicky at times. I read enough that I took it off my list of machines to consider. this is just my opinion but I was researching on and off for a couple years before I bit the bullet and bought a Cowboy 4500.

I bought a 4500 from Bob at Toledo Industrial a little while ago. before this I never ran a machine and hand stitched my knife sheaths and some holsters for 30 years. I use 277 thread and also bought the narrow plate for it. the biggest "pro" for me is, a knife sheath that would normally take approx a half hour to hand stitch can be done on this machine in less than 30 seconds. it currently resides in my knife shop tightly covered with a bed sheet, I don't have any vermin out there but I do have lots of spiders and mud dauber wasps that make nest's everywhere. I also have bad condensation problems certain times of the year so I'm currently building a 12 x 12 climate controlled clean room in the shop for my leatherwork and building folding knives "tiny screws and parts". back to your question, I can't think of any cons to this machine...other that there's a definite learning curve going from hand stitching to running a machine, but so far I love mine. for holster work you will probably want to get the narrow plate and look at other foot options available, there's lots of youtube videos on this machine.

The fun police strike again!

Has anyone used Zylene to thin Weldwood contact cement? or any luck with something else?

All my tooling and stamping for years has been done with a small lightweight steel hammer, I'm finally ready to put it away and either get a mallet or maul. I'm looking for recommendations from the fine folks here on what they have been using and what you suggest, rawhide or plastic mallet or poly maul. Thanks...

That holster rig looks beautiful, great job!

Sorry about that... the top one has Bocote scales with desert Ironwood bolsters and black liners with nickel silver pins and lanyard hole. The bottom one has stabilized Box Elder Burl scales with red liners, nickel silver pins and lanyard hole. the red tint in the wood comes from stress in the tree likely the burl came from a crotch in the tree. Both of the blades come from large billets of Damascus I buy from Alabama Damascus. I profile the blades, hollow grind, heat treat and acid etch in my shop. Being in Florida I mostly use stainless steel, preferably CPM-154 because of all the humidity here and High carbon is steel prone to rust. I used to live near Tampa Bay but recently I moved to North Florida and I think the humidity here is even worse. it's rained every day here for the last three weeks and if you don't keep high carbon either oiled or waxed, you'll get rust in short time. I do forge high carbon steel occasionally but prefer making my knives from high alloy stainless.

Defeatist way of life? I don't know how you come up with that. I was saying you must not shop for anything other than food because most stores in America are full of Chinese stuff. I'm typing on an HP laptop now, made in China, controlled by a mouse, made in china, while watching an LG TV, made in china. There's evil everywhere in the world, you like Japanese, read up on what they did to the Chinese in the 30s and early 40s. America rebuilt them. I like to buy American too but sadly our quality in a lot of things are junk. I've had American trucks all my life and would never buy an import, I don't care where it was made but if I'm in a Walmart looking for a coffee maker and their all made in China what am I supposed to do, go to my Apple phone made in China and Google where to buy an American made coffee maker? I'm THERE man...and I WANT a coffee maker! As far as me going out of work from people buying knives at Walmart, that's not going to happen. people will always buy what they can afford, just like high end cars, clothes, electronics and everything else. if someone want's a high quality handmade knife made in America and they can afford it they can buy one of mine. just like buying a leather belt made in China or upping their game and buying a handmade belt like lots of folks here make.

How about a Texas longhorn steer, head or skull with your logo on top between the horns?

You can go to a site called Imgur, I've used it for years. you can download pictures from your device to there, then copy-paste them here.

It's good to think that way but you must not spend much money on anything, cause every store in America is loaded with Chinese stuff. it's hard to go shopping for anything but food and not come home with something from China.

Recently just finished these two knife sheaths...still learning machine stitching on a CB 4500. Thanks for looking!

Very nice Dwight!

Those holsters and grips are awesome!