Chief Filipino

Very nice! Did you make the knife as well?

Nice! To answer your questions, which gave me a lot of food for thought, I think that I want a mix of both. There are times where I do what I want to do and feel perfection is whatever comes out, and there are times where I want it to be almost machine perfect but made by hand. I think this comes from me vacillating between wanting to just make what I want (my own art) and wanting my stuff to sell so that perhaps one day I could do this as a full time job. I lean more towards making art, but then I look at my stockpile of things I've made and think of all the money I've invested and haven't gotten back. Then again, I haven't been hustling as much to sell it. I haven't gone out and gotten a booth to try to sell my work in over a year, mostly relying on my Etsy store... anyways, I'll figure it out one of these days. It is never too late to learn something new! As you said your father's best work came from his heart. I don't really know you personally, but it kind of seems like you are letting your head get in the way of your heart. There are times where I try to go into a meditative state and just focus on my breathing or nothing at all and just create. Maybe something like that could work for you, maybe abstract painting could help you get out of your head and into your heart. Of course if you're trying to sell works, those often tend to be the most difficult pieces to sell, at least in my experience. Thank you! As the saying goes, "I am my own worst critic." I have to remind myself of that and just let go of trying to gain perfection.

Thank you! Thank you! There's still so much to learn, I'm definitely hustling to do my best on pretty much everything (sometimes I skip steps or get lazy when I make things just for myself). Thank you! I'd love to see some of your father's work. Thank you for the tips! I always struggle with tooling because I will often stray outside of the lines. I haven't tried smoothing them out with the spoon... didn't even think of that. As for the beader blade, I haven't even heard of this! I was going for parallel but my swivel knife skills aren't there yet so that blade is a must now! Thank you again! Next pay check I think I'll pick me up a couple blades. Are they hard to sharpen?

I made this a few months ago but haven't been very active on this forum (something I look to remedy). I had Rich Greenwood, a local bladesmith, custom make me a karambit for my gigantic hands. I then made the sheath for it, going for a friction fit. I feel like the tooling is my personal best (I know there isn't much tooling) but I don't do a lot of tooling so my growth is slow. I am a big guy with ham-sammich hands so the handle/knife is big. To many it may be a weird looking knife but I love it and Rich did an excellent job meeting my specs. While the tooling came out well, I ran into an issue when putting the knife back in the sheath. The shape/design and thickness made it very difficult to get a smooth re-sheathing. I still have to fiddle with it when trying to return it, but it draws fairly smooth. I think that I will make another sheath for it someday, perhaps using a combination of wood and leather. I know this is the show off section and people feel a little uncomfortable adding critiques, but I have improved so much because of your input. If you see something you would like to add your two cents on feel free! I appreciate it!