chuck123wapati

pigs ear sammich sounds yummy!

your friend is right. You could have been done days ago. But thats how we learn i've done the same. I agree too.

Mine are really long very slender knives with a blunt tip and straight cutting edge other than that really nothing, they work awesome for cutting tomatoes paper thin also ham or roasts. Mine are pretty old, probably made in the 50s, before they mostly went to serrated blades, i have the complete set of Maxam kitchen knives they were made in Japan and are really nice tools. they have to be kept razor sharp to get through the crust but when they are you can cut very straight with them X50crmov15 is stainless steel made in Germany. It's somewhere between mid- and high-range quality-wise. This is the go-to option for people who want a great knife they can rely on for the right price. This steel has little to no flaws and great reviews all around.X50CrMoV15 Steel is synonymous with kitchen knives. If you're shopping for a new kitchen or chef knife today, chances are high you'll get a knife from a popular brand with the X50CrMoV15 Steel blade

great job for sure. You may try taping a strip of leather in between the sights along the top so you get a good front sight channel and then sew around the trigger guard and barrel closer i think that may loosen up with use. I don't always line my holsters either.

love it!

oh heck yea that looks like a great time was had.

beautiful job an welcome to the club half the fun is makin the tools lol.

i'm sorry i use a straight bladed bread knife lol because i hate serrated blades for just this reason. You can still use the steel on the flat side of the blade or get a small round diamond stone or even regular round stone, your dowel would work also.

if the installed roller would fit standard embossing wheels it would work. If not you will have to take it apart and have one of the rollers specially made to fit. You will have to get a machinist to make that and that will be an added cost. Plus I don't see any real easy way to change the wheels except to take it all apart every time.

Sure it would work but if you have a plain old butchers/ kitchen steel it works every bit as good on a bread knife as any kitchen knife. Once you have your edge just hit it a few licks with the steel then again after after cutting your bread then wipe it down and put it away for next time. No need to overthink sharpening its been done successfully for centuries.

i think its really nice.

anything for waterproofing leather shoes or boots will work.

Ditto Gimli wasn't it? Still very cool work !

beautiful what leathers did you use?

then the box wont fit lol. Darn nice project indeed!

doesn't look like any leather tool I've ever seen

it would be interesting to know. Keep me posted. I doubt it too however its way to hard to work and more for pocket knives and such. A round knife would cost hundreds and really again the average leather worker just doesn't need it, now maybe if you were cutting all day on a much larger scale.

the Tandy head knife being sold now is stainless steel so more than likely m390 which can be hardened to about rc 62 or some such, blue paper steel is a very old Japanese steel blend, one of the best, and is usually tempered to a much harder scale up to 65 then tempered back to about 61 again the difference is the manufacturing process more so than the steel type either can be tempered to what you need or want. The difference you see is the hardness of the tool, simply the Tandy knives aren't tempered to the same hardness for whatever reason the makers decided on. You cant get a good knife without good knife making skills and why some knives are more expensive than others the craft is just like the leather craft, you can buy an off the shelf manufactured wallet at Walmart or you can buy a better wallet at a high end store, both are the same leather but neither are the same quality, one is cheaper to make because the craftsmanship and quality is lost in the bottom line. Hope that makes sense.

If your blade is newer it may already be one of those and the reason we are talking about modern blades not being as well made. Heres the deal a knife blade steel has three properties. hardness, flexibility and toughness. These three attributes are variables in the matrix of what your knife is going to be used for. A straight razor for example is made very hard but it is so brittle it will break if dropped, a fro on the other hand isn't even made to be sharp but to be flexable and tough enough to hammer on without chipping or breaking. So what does you leather knife need to be? It needs to be built to cut leather. That quality will come from the manufacturing process not the steel type. A blade of 56 Rockwell hardness for example can be made from any of the modern tool steels and they will all be 56 Rockwell hardness none will be better or worse than the other all will sharpen the same and hold the same edge. When you buy a knife because of the steel type its like buying a car because its a Ford or a Chevy when you need to be buying because you need either a car or a truck to do the job. When you need to think of it in the terms of the job it is meant to do. You said earlier you like the ability to easily sharpen your knife, that comes from the hardness the blade is tempered to not the type of steel make sense?

those are really nice!

"I wonder whether the difference is not that once upon a time there were people in quality control who took pride in their work and their company's name. " exactly! and why some folks say my new Cs Osborne is awesome others say it doesn't hold an edge. Knives are what led the steel industry in the beginning and the science behind good knife steel is hundreds if not thousands of years old. Other things though also come in to a good blade for leather The edge angle and grind are equally important to the sharpness of the blade. some of the newer blades i have seen use a sabre or even a convex grind whereas the older blades and better blades use a full flat grind this makes for a thinner blade at the leather and less drag during the cutting process but it also costs more to make which is another problem of modern manufacturing the bottom line now is all about profit.

if you dry the handle it may become loose! if you do dry it then you will have to add oils back in to again swell the grain and tighten the handle back up. I have tried the electrolysis method also, went back to vinegar and a wire brush, easier cheaper and faster imo for rust removal now for etching that's a whole other kettle of fun lol.

Yes probably but usually if the steel is talked about the steel type becomes a selling point and reason to charge more not necessarily because it does a better job than another type at cutting leather. Your knife making friend can explain it better in person I'm sure. The reason people often prefer vintage tools is that the production processes were much stricter which overall produced blades that were more uniform from one to the other not that the steel was some new blend of metals. if that makes sense.

Yes that is the chemistry of steel and why they make steels for certain uses, we are talking high carbon steels for use as knives. Its the way it is produced that makes the quality of the blade more so than the type of High carbon steel that is used all that steel type talk you hear is mostly just hype to sell the product or bragging rights about an overpriced knife. Just a few degrees either way during the hardening or tempering stage can ruin or make the knife no matter the type of high carbon steel. Just my opinion I have made a lot of knives with the same steel and some were good and some had to be re hardened and re tempered because they weren't as good that's all part of a process that has been lost in mass production and why there are poor blades on the market. Of course there are producers out there that use low grade steel too.

mountain men and fur trappers used the green River knife also. their old saying "i run him plumb up to the Green River" meant he stuck the blade in up to the stamped name and killed the person. great knives i have a couple for butchering.