Mustered some precious little time and worked on my new bush blade... just some refining the grind, some polishing and cleaning up the tang... and a bit of filework. Blade is some mystery stainless steel with an exceptionally fine grain. I first thought it to be 440C or even Niolox, but the more I think about it the more I have to admit I can´t make heads nor tails out of it. I daresay it has a hardness of about 61, while being flexible enough to take a beating. It carves mild steel rods. Chopping antler dented the blade a bit, but then the edge angle was just 10°, so I modified it to a more robust 15°. The grind is a high convex bevel, now with the tiniest of a secondary edge.
Sorry for the lousy pic of the gimping... The tang holes are hot - punched through to save me the costs of ten glass drill bits... ;-) Blade is 5mmx118.
I am currently thinking hard about what scales to fit. I had prepared some elk antler scales, but alas, they simply do not seem to fit the bill. There also is some birchwood burr and I am also contemplating some yew, bog oak, ebony or spindle wood scales... still thinking. I am taking my time with this one. It might as well be the last knife worth noting for a long time... for it´s that time again when I have to move on or think everything anew, so there might be no smithy in the future.
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