So it has been a while coming, and I went for it rather carefully... I had found an old chisel in the woods, which eventually became that bushcraft knife. In the process I had learned it was apparently crucible steel, to be precise, which shows a "Wootz" pattern. To be quite honest, I am not quite sure what to make of that "Wootz" pattern. Petr had looked at some variants of that steel and just said it was due to "uneven carbon distribution". Now that´s a bit of a redundancy, because the dendrite structures in Wootz that are responsible for the pattern also could be called that name.
Now, it is my personal knife, and I don´t want to sell it. It´s hair-splitting sharp and keeps an edge very well. The shape makes it rather dexterous, and the pattern looks cool to me, so there really is no need to tell.
Nonetheless, I love this kind of knifemaking a lot. The steel is somewhat "arcane" to me, and the resulting knife more than just a piece of steel with an edge on it. There is an adventure involved in making these things. Chance is, you get crap when you hunt for crap, but sometimes, and more often than not, you can find some right treasures if you look carefully. It is like a hunt.
Now I thought a lot about the sheath, doing some dangler rings and mountings and fittings and putting in a firesteel. But fact is, I have made sheaths like that, and I realized only but recently that there is one real bummer: I just tend not to wear them. So I made a simple sheath that can be worn quite discretely, feels comfy and does not feel like a bag of screws hanging from your belt ;-).
The sheath is quenched in a soda solution in spirit, wet-formed and hot-waxed and treated with violin veneer and then cold-waxed and oil-polished. It feels nearly as firm as Kydex and has a right snap to it. It was somewhat of an experiment, but it worked out fine.
I am still thinking about adding some carving to the handle´s end, or fitting in some silver intarsia, but I am not really sure if it would not foul up a design that´s good as is. But I am still thinking about it. Maybe a little later....;-)
In any case I will keep you posted!
