When it comes to splitting hares!

[Crofter]

Heres a small splitter I made for my son from an old file. It'll shave yar whiskers too! Needs a cleaning up and different light to show the bronze bolsters and phenolite/glass handles.

 

[scottr]

splitting hares

Frank , that sure is a fine knife you made . Do you use it for skinning ? Scott

 

[Crofter]

It would be a skinner, but It was a Christmas gift to my son a number of years ago. He packed it away. Is home visiting and going thru some of his old stuff this weekend and found it had a bit of rust. Guess it better go into the gun cabinet.

 

[Al Smith]

Fine looking knife

A file makes a dandy knife .Did you anneal it,or leave it hard?I have one,from Solgen Germany,made from a reclaimed,annealed file,you can shave with it,if you have the nerve.

 

[Crofter]

Al I annealed it in wood fire and cooled covered in coals and ashes. After holes for handle rivets were drilled and the shaping 90 % complete I heated and oil quenched. After finishing but before polishing the edge was drawn to a light yellow colour, the handle area to a blue and the spine to a blue brown. I left some of the original file tooling on the back of the blade just to show what it was made of. Its one of the things I thought about doing as a kid. Am kind of enjoying being in my second childhood!

 

[Toneman]

Nice work Frank!
My Dad also makes knives from old files. Keeps him out of my mom's hair and my brothers and I get awsome knives!

 

[Al Smith]

Nice heat treat,you got the colors right.That edge is one hard puppy Most likely 60 R or above .I never made a file knife,but have made several power hack saw blades,used a plasma cutter for the second handle hole,and left the teeth on the back .

 

[Crofter]

It is a bit of a crapshoot heat treating. I have played a bit with tapered roller bearing races from large trucks etc. Seems there is enough alloy in it besides carbon that the tempering colours dont hold true as for plain high carbon, but it has amazingly fine grain when you get it right. A neighbour of mine makes violins and I make some special shaped knives for him. I should take some pics of his violins in the making. Now there is some beautiful work. He wont touch wood that is less than ten years air dried
Below is a link to his site if you appreciate things with nice curves!

http://www.violins.algoma.on.ca/
click on the site link Instruments for pics.

 

[rahtreelimbs]

Real nice Frank.

Here is a few pics of a handsaw handle that I made out of (I believe) mahogany. This is something that I was just playing around with.

 

[Crofter]

You get tired of plastic in your life. no matter how light and functional a lot of it might be, it just doesnt have the warmth and character of wood. You can enjoy your work for a long time Rich

 

[rahtreelimbs]

You get tired of plastic in your life. no matter how light and functional a lot of it might be, it just doesnt have the warmth and character of wood. You can enjoy your work for a long time Rich

I find the same feeling with gunstocks. Too bad wood can't be as inert as something synthetic.

 

[bwalker]

I love a good piece of wood on a gun, but I wont own one with wood. Just not practical.
i did see a winchester supergrade the other day on sale that had the best pice of walnut I have ever seen, Talk about drool.

Frank, What sort of wood does your friend use to make violins?

 

[Crofter]

Ben it is mostly figured maple for the backs. Flame, tiger and birds eye. I have seen some blanks he has of yellow birch that has very nice figure too. The tops are all spruce that has exceptionally tight growth rings. What is really intrigueing is to watch the tuning process. The wood is scraped to different thickness patterns using micrometer calipers and then finished tuned by vibrating the parts with a frequency generator. The wood is sprinkled with pepper and the patterns produced at different places at different frequencies show up startlingly. sometimes one area is reluctant and needs to be thinned. The mass produced instruments dont get this attention at all. He used to make some beautifull gunstocks and canoes too. Shoots a mean 358 norma magnum on a p14 enfield. He is getting pretty buggered up with emphesema but still goes after his moose every year.