Progress on my little fully integral En - Nep

So, it has been quite some time coming, but it is getting there. I have been treading very carefully with this knife, but here it is. The blade is made from spring steel with a selective temper, the bolsters are one piece. the tang, while being a good 10 mm thick, is drilled and lathed out for balance, bolsters and buttcap are finished with a ball peen hammer. The scales are stag antler fitted with volcanic fibre inlays and screwed on with a  brass screw theat was then sawed off. Of course, they are epoxied on, too. The balance point is still a bit too far back to the rear, just behind the index finger, but as is, it´s nimble enough. The filework shows a snake that winds itself thhrough the bolster and into the tang, and I hope to be ableto do some engraving, too. I will show you more details as soon as it´s done. The blade itself has a high convex bevel, and having taken it through its paces already I can say...

:-)

I hope I can show you some testing soon.;-).

I like this one.

My saddest knife:-(

This is the saddest knife I made, still not mounted after all these years. I just could not stand working on it, because it hurt. Call me a sentimental old fart, but that´s how it is. I forged this one on the very last night in the garden of my old home. It was the darkest night of the year, two days before Chrismas. All our possessings except the forge and shop were already moved, and yes, they drove us out at that time of year... It was cold, and snow fell on my way through the woods (Went there by walking). When I reached the shop, it stopped, and the stars came out. I lit the forge in the darkness, using charcoal I had made myself in the garden. I forged this one with the dirt forge from an old cold chisel. At first, I wanted to make an Athamen, but I let it cool in the ashes. I had some beers too much beside the dying embers, while a piece of my heart died with them. I just sat there, and I knew I would never again be able to be there. Yap, I cried my fill, but the cold, cold stars were there to soothe my searing wound that was to become my heart. Frost came, and it went colder still, and I made for the long and lonely walk home. The blade I left in the dying embers to anneal and for the stars to shine upon it. But another smith came to forge it, and his hammer was older, colder and mightier than mine; frost bit a crack along the middle of that would- be Athamen. I have not yet quite understood the story that this tells, but I want to understand it. I ground one half away in Matthias Zwissler´s smithy, who was so kind to teach me and let me do it. There now is just a tiny hairline crack along the integral side, but runs away from the blade, so I will use it. The wood for the handle lies beside it, and it´s a part from an old rotten 98 K Wehrmachts carbine I found in the lake when the dam was to be repaired. Noone wanted it, so it´s still at my mother´s. It lay forsaken for sixty years, deep in the water. It is a part of a weapon thrown away because peace made its violent way. I like to see it this way. You can see it otherwise, but still there are sixty years of lying submerged in the water, beneath the trees, the wind in the leaves. I see it as a gift of the power I worship, which has so many names and still no name that comes close to it. I will make a bronze buttcap to counterweight the dark walnut wood, and I forged a dragonhead to top it off. But I still have to take my time.

Progress on the little integral...

So, this is the integral I started in the smithy at the Industriemuseum Ennepetal. The bronze finish has worn off, unfortunately, but it now has a scandi grind. The blade is silver steel. The surface is ball-peened to a reptile-skin-structure (or the like;-)).

I am about to decide, what handle it will get. I am thinking of elk antler, reindeer crown with a carving, oak, birchwood burl or pepperwood (Corse juniper) burl... maybe bronze ferrule and cap... I am still thinking, as I said. ;-)