Well here are a couple Ive been working on. The one with the cord wrapped handle is made from a piece of bandsaw blade from the local saw mill and I knocked it out because I was getting frustrated with the slow progress on the Beast Im working on. The cord wrapped one has a nice flexibility to it even though the file just slides across it now. The cord wrapped one is about 1/16" thick and 1 1/16" from blade to spine and 9" OAL with a 4 3/8" blade. Kind of sucks though that it wasnt supported right when being heat treated and kind of started to sag, bend warp whatever while it was hot and still has a bit of that to it. The beast is only about one step past being a blank but is from a leaf spring and is 1/4" thick, 1 7/8" from edge to spine, just shy of 13" OAL with an 8" blade. It will be part of a set when its done along with a much smaller boneing type knife I think, I know it will have a small mate just havent decided absolutely for sure on the small ones design yet.
Cool. Leaf spring steel is a good thing to grab when you can find it free or cheap. Has a lot of uses and makes awesome blade steel
Yeah I have 2 full leafs laying out front and can probably get more for the request. Tina babysits for a guy who hauls off junk cars and he gave them to me when I asked. Whenever I can get a forge set up need to get some of the coil springs too, I know they work real nice too but you have to be able to straighten and flatten it. The cord wrapped one is done, it was just kind of a diversion from the slow work on the other one and to see how a design would come out as well as to try the new material. The material definatly looks promising and think I will use that for the companion planned for the Beast. The Beast will definatly be a working tool. I have had blades from spring metal before and they stand abuse butifuly and this one is heavy but plan to make sure it balances clsoe to the hilt, just a bit to the front, so its easy to controle and not tireing to use but still have enouph weight toward the tip to be able to flip/swing for chopping with and so on. Still have to take a bit off the handle but not quite half the material to be removed is off the blade at this point and at present it balances about 1" ahead of where the hilt will be. Plan to move that back about 3/4" to 1" and may put the balance right at the front edge of the hilt, still trying to decide for sure where exactly the best balance should be for it but will definatly be balanced to the blade side rather than toward the spine.
You aught to be able to whack a tree or two in half with that puppy !! Git r gone, I can't wait to see it
Yup thats the basic idea on that one, make sure it can handle the heaviest nastiest work you can throw at it but still try to makeit such that it can also do a lot of the more basicthings like heavy skinning and so on then put a companion wit hit that will be somewhat smaller and a lot lighter and designed for more of the light and or precise work as well as boneing and fileting.