Within the last few years I have learned how fulfilling doing things with your hands can be. For myself, there are few things that feel as rewarding as taking an ax or tomahawk that I've just forged and putting it through a bit of a stress test, seeing it perform, and knowing that it is performing due to my craftsmanship (or sometimes seeing that it
ISN'T performing due to my craftsmanship...). One of those few things that do compare to stress testing my crafted goods has to be helping someone make something. This weekend I helped one of my closest friends, Heath, finish his knife before he heads off to South Dakota for a summer internship. When I say "helped", it was more of being present and offering little tips here and there. Heath did 95% of the work on this beast and it sure is an impressive knife. Some of you reading this may know that Heath is a taller guy and so the larger handle on it is a pretty good fit. He found the design idea of the handle from a knife that his dad Tim (Tim, Timbo, Timbo Slice, T-Hoff... I have many nicknames for his dad) has that has a beautiful dark curly handle on a damascus blade. Personally, I think he hit the nail on the head. I've shared images of his blade before, but I cannot emphasize how cool the texture from the farrier's rasp is. When coupled with the overall shape of the blade, I think this is one of the coolest blades that I've seen. I mentioned this on facebook, but Heath should be the knife smith, not me!
ISN'T performing due to my craftsmanship...). One of those few things that do compare to stress testing my crafted goods has to be helping someone make something. This weekend I helped one of my closest friends, Heath, finish his knife before he heads off to South Dakota for a summer internship. When I say "helped", it was more of being present and offering little tips here and there. Heath did 95% of the work on this beast and it sure is an impressive knife. Some of you reading this may know that Heath is a taller guy and so the larger handle on it is a pretty good fit. He found the design idea of the handle from a knife that his dad Tim (Tim, Timbo, Timbo Slice, T-Hoff... I have many nicknames for his dad) has that has a beautiful dark curly handle on a damascus blade. Personally, I think he hit the nail on the head. I've shared images of his blade before, but I cannot emphasize how cool the texture from the farrier's rasp is. When coupled with the overall shape of the blade, I think this is one of the coolest blades that I've seen. I mentioned this on facebook, but Heath should be the knife smith, not me! 
I've had some time to work on a few other projects lately. One of them being a spike hawk from a rail road spike. This one actually hardened more than the previous. A great looking piece, I think. I need to work on having some clean lines but this definitely has a hand-forged look. I'm going to be sending this to a friend once the new, clean hawk handles come in (hopefully today). I forged this one different. Instead of upsetting the spike end of the railroad spike and fuller the material to make the blade part, I used the opposite end since it already had a nice bearded shape. I then drew out the end with the spike on it to be more pointed and sharper. What amazed me is the amount of time this took to forge. The last hawk I did (from my previous post) took me almost 5 hours to craft. This one took me about an hour and a half. Using my mandrel from Kayne & Son is saving me a ton of time, and if you're starting out making hawks you should definitely look up their tomahawk mandrel. It's worth the $40 due to the amount of time it saves. It will give you a perfectly shaped and tapered eye every time! 
We've also been commissioned to two new projects from up in New Harmony. We've been working on a donor tree, which I'm super excited about. This project is letting us get a bit more artistic than some of our other projects. Wayne has the basic outline conceptualized, and we have two different prototypes we're working with at the moment. At this point, it's just down to deciding which style we like more. I'll share more pics once we've gotten a bit farther. Shown is a picture of Wayne hammering a piece of steel that we've cut and adjusted to resemble a tree bark like texture. 
Also being laid out is a new handrail that we won the bid for. I'm excited for this project as well. As much as I love forging and fabricating, I really enjoy painting the fences and handrails we make with a spray gun for auto-body work. I can pop in some tunes and go to town for hours while painting. No pictures of that, yet. Soon, though ;)
Happy hammering!
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