Skinna Skinna, Chicken Dinna

[Redmeadow Knives]

This is a skinner that I'm working on for a good friend on the forum. He might be a glutton for punishment as this will be his second knife from me, but don't hold that against him.

I am by no means a Custom Maker, I call myself a Mangler. I have only recently cut my teeth on taking custom orders and enjoy the challenge. I like the idea of discussing them in the open, it lets the recipient see what's going on and gives them a chance to say "Hey, wait a minute, that's stupid!". It's not much of a custom if you don't interact along the way, and why not do it in the open. Discussions of cost, addresses etc, will always be done privately of course. We'll see how this works out.

Enough of the babble, this build is in progress already but here's where we're at, I had already posted a few pictures in another thread, excuse the quotes. Feel free to post a comment or a question, and Makers are always welcome in this sub, there's no toes to step on in here.

We discussed a leather stacked handle with finger grooves, and a thin trailing point blade with a swedge.

A skinner I'm working on. 4" edge, gonna be a leather stack with finger grooves. The finished grind will go a bit higher. A small swedge and a nice taper on 1/8" 1095.

I'll be out of the shop a good part of July, I'll throw up some updates when I get back and crackalackin.

I thought I would try alternating thicknesses of leather, this is 7-9oz and 3-4oz cut into strips and roughed up with a file.

Glad to be back home. Cut up some leather for handle material. I'm gonna experiment with some 7-9oz and 3-4oz alternating. I'll get these cut down and punched, soak and compress them.

Let me know if you're down with the alternating thicknesses Scott. It might look interesting, if not we can always do them evenly.

Cut down into rectangles, stacked and ready to punch the slot for the tang.

While the blade is normalizing in the oven, I'll punch some holes for the tang and soak them.

Scott, should we start a separate thread for this? I'll try to do a bit of a WIP.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

I use a vacuum sealer jar filled with water and a bit of dish soap to draw air out and soak the leather, so I can compress it. The vacuum seems to really draw the air out well.

I tie a string through them to keep them in the order that I cut them in. That sounds pointless but if there's variances in the thickness of the leather strips, it will be gradual instead of jumbled. The accuracy of the eye is a great but evil thing.

 

[Mack]

I don't remember discussing this with you but that design came right out of my dreams.
I see very cool things ahead for you.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

I don't remember discussing this with you but that design came right out of my dreams.
I see very cool things ahead for you.

It's because I watch you when you sleep, but not in a creepy way or anything. OK, maybe it is creepy, you should probably close your blinds!

Thanks Mack, that means a lot.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

The 6 1/2" of leather compressed down to 4" (60% of the original size). The outside looks wonky, but just inside should be nice and even.

I've got a theory about this and it might be complete garbage, but all of the old leather stacks I see that didn't get great maintenance over the years have separated leather discs, loose pommels and guards. I assume this is from the leather shrinking and not solely from poorly attached pommels and guards. Compressed leather shouldn't shrink or swell even if it's neglected. Any opinions on that are welcome.

 

[T.Knotts]

Dang John looking good! I agree I do not see how that leather can ever get wonky as tightly as it's packed. Liking the two sizes of leather.

 

[Scott Hanson]

I agree with you in that compressing the leather washers will make the handle less likely to shrink but I think all stacked leather handled knives need to have some sort of regular care to prevent shrinkage issues. I've seen leather stacked knife handles and sheaths develop a whitish colored mold on them from being stored in a moist basement over a period of time and also I've seen and repaired a few stacked leather washer handled knives that the leather washers seemed to have completely dry rotted until the handle would crumble off the tang. For what it's worth, I've tried treating my stacked leather handle knives with super glue, tung oil, polyurethane varnish and snow seal, they all seem to work pretty good but I like snow seal at the moment, the more you can do to eliminate moisture content in the leather the better off you are. I look at the old Scagel knives that are in good shape and wonder what he did, eliminate all the modern finishes first of all and what do you have left, some sort of oil and guessing by the dark brown/black color of his the handles, likely treatment would be linseed oil which was a popular finish in them

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[Redmeadow Knives]

Dang John looking good! I agree I do not see how that leather can ever get wonky as tightly as it's packed. Liking the two sizes of leather.

Thanks Tim:thumbup:

I agree with you in that compressing the leather washers will make the handle less likely to shrink but I think all stacked leather handled knives need to have some sort of regular care to prevent shrinkage issues. I've seen leather stacked knife handles and sheaths develop a whitish colored mold on them from being stored in a moist basement over a period of time and also I've seen and repaired a few stacked leather washer handled knives that the leather washers seemed to have completely dry rotted until the handle would crumble off the tang. For what it's worth, I've tried treating my stacked leather handle knives with super glue, tung oil, polyurethane varnish and snow seal, they all seem to work pretty good but I like snow seal at the moment, the more you can do to eliminate moisture content in the leather the better off you are. I look at the old Scagel knives that are in good shape and wonder what he did, eliminate all the modern finishes first of all and what do you have left, some sort of oil and guessing by the dark brown/black color of his the handles, likely treatment would be linseed oil which was a popular finish in them days.

Thanks for that Scott, nice to see you here. It sounds like maintenance is key with these. Snow Seal sounds like it would work well. Any thoughts on pure beeswax?

I've been thinking of doing an experiment with different treatments. Making a few stacks, treating them with different things and leaving them outside to see what happens, might take a while. Let them get wind, rain, snow and subzero temps, could be interesting. Maybe linseed oil, snow seal, beeswax, super glue, untreated....

 

[Scott Hanson]

I believe Bob Loveless used to dip his sheaths in a double boiler filled with bees wax and it worked well for him. A long time ago I tried doing that with a sheath and paraffin wax and I totally cooked the sheath, it turned dark brown, shrank and looked like a piece of fried bacon, the paraffin must have been too hot. lol. I've been using snow seal lately by putting generous amounts on and warming the knives with stacked leather handles and sheaths near a propane space heater in my shop until the get uncomfortable to handle then I work the snow seal in and repeat this process 3-4 times until the leather will not soak up any more snow seal. I took a piece of tooling leather and saturated it with snow seal and left it floating in my quench tank for a few days and when I came back it was still floating around like a cork, I pulled it out and it was bone dry on the inside. Snow seal does contain bees wax along with petroleum additives, so leather finishes containing bees wax get a big thumbs up from me anyhow. One thing I forgot to mention is I read an article by SR Johnson I think and he used stabilized stacked leather for his knife handles for a show in Italy I believe, I also think guy here on the forum have tried stabilizing their leather knife handle after the knife was complete, but I don't know how that worked out.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

I've been wanting to try the dunk method with sheaths. I know beeswax has a very small window of melt to burn! I try to keep it around 160 when I filter wax from our hives. We keep two, but I don't think I have enough wax for a double boiler, maybe next year.

I might fool around with melting in additional beeswax into sno seal, maybe add some linseed oil and see what happens.

 

[Mack]

I love it when you guys discuss things like this. Believe it or not, you are teaching a lot of us while you further your own educations.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

I love it when you guys discuss things like this. Believe it or not, you are teaching a lot of us while you further your own educations.

That's what it's all about Mack, I've learned so much from this forum it's ridiculous. Hopefully we can keep good discussions like this going. Ill never stop learning. I'm just a mangler, but I want to do some detailed WIP's on leather stacks especially, there really isn't a lot of information out there on them. I'd like to do a detailed start to finish on a full project, I've had a request for an Air Force Bolt knife, maybe by then I'll be better at remembering to take pictures as I go.

Everyone's welcome to throw in their two cents, the more the merrier:thumbup:

 

[Mack]

That's what it's all about Mack, I've learned so much from this forum it's ridiculous. Hopefully we can keep good discussions like this going. Ill never stop learning. I'm just a mangler, but I want to do some detailed WIP's on leather stacks especially, there really isn't a lot of information out there on them. I'd like to do a detailed start to finish on a full project, I've had a request for an Air Force Bolt knife, maybe by then I'll be better at remembering to take pictures as I go.

Everyone's welcome to throw in their two cents, the more the merrier:thumbup:

As long as you continue thinking like this your work can only improve. From where I sit it looks like it's already at a very high level.
I expect great things coming from Montana. The Ruanas and Behrings are going to have some serious competition.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

You bring up a good point Mack, always trying to improve. Fortunately, I don't feed my family with knifemaking, I don'I call it a hobby, it's more of an obsession that I'll do until the wheels come off.

Having said that, I've watched makers get to a point where they have a decent enough product to sell, level out, reproduce, not improve, and disappear. Which is fine if that's their intent. Personally, if I never sold a single knife, I'd still be doing this. My name is John, and I'm a knifeaholic

As far as the names you mentioned, humbling and appreciated.

 

[Dopic1]

You bring up a good point Mack, always trying to improve. Fortunately, I don't feed my family with knifemaking, I don'I call it a hobby, it's more of an obsession that I'll do until the wheels come off.

Having said that, I've watched makers get to a point where they have a decent enough product to sell, level out, reproduce, not improve, and disappear. Which is fine if that's their intent. Personally, if I never sold a single knife, I'd still be doing this. My name is John, and I'm a knifeaholic

As far as the names you mentioned, humbling and appreciated.

Hi John!

You and Mack are absolutely correct, you never stop learning. I try to be like a sponge and soak up every bit of information I can and this forum has been a wealth of it. It's like that with me and wood, every time I drive by a lumber yard, see a felled tree I almost wreck the car, I feel like an ambulance chaser sometimes.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this completed.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

That's funny Scott. I was at a hotel last week and they had these big rectangle blocks for doorhandles. They felt like some kind of synthetic material and I thought, man that would make for a nice handle.
So I tore one off, ran and stayed at the hotel across the street!

You should show off you're turnings more, that recent pic you sent is phenomenal:thumbup: (Dudes got serious skill, but he's a ninja).

 

[Scott Hanson]

You bring up a good point Mack, always trying to improve. Fortunately, I don't feed my family with knifemaking, I don'I call it a hobby, it's more of an obsession that I'll do until the wheels come off.

Having said that, I've watched makers get to a point where they have a decent enough product to sell, level out, reproduce, not improve, and disappear. Which is fine if that's their intent. Personally, if I never sold a single knife, I'd still be doing this. My name is John, and I'm a knifeaholic

As far as the names you mentioned, humbling and appreciated.

That was happening to me for quite a while, I got stuck in a rut making drop point hunters and selling them. If I had to take a guess I think I probably made about 50 or more drop points in a row and finally had enough and started experimenting with other blade and sheath styles. Some repetitive work is ok because it will keep your skill level up and make you more efficient, such fine tuning some of my techniques grinding,handlers and sheaths. But I was getting a little burnt on just making drop points so now I'm starting to experiment on different style knives and sheaths in an attempt to become more creative in knife making. And I think your right John not to worry if they sell or not, right now I'm working on 4 knives right now 2 drop points and 2 experimental type knives to try and increase my skill set.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

That's awesome Scott, your work is amazing down to the smallest detail, to have that desire to improve from that says a lot.

I see what your saying about repetition being a good way to improve, my problem is that I haven't found my style yet and really want to try out the ideas in my head. I don't know that any of mine even look like they are from the same guy! I'll find my niche one day. Leather stacks are really interesting me though.

Another maker had put the bug in my ear to try a leather stack (you know who you are!) and about the same time you had posted a couple of your pieces that knocked me out of my chair. They really inspired me.

The great thing about knifemaking is that there is no end to it. I am just chipping the surface but I know that I'll never find a level where I'll be satisfied.

 

[Dopic1]

That's funny Scott. I was at a hotel last week and they had these big rectangle blocks for doorhandles. They felt like some kind of synthetic material and I thought, man that would make for a nice handle.
So I tore one off, ran and stayed at the hotel across the street!

You should show off you're turnings more, that recent pic you sent is phenomenal:thumbup: (Dudes got serious skill, but he's a ninja).

Don't know if you saw this one or not , it's in the rough out stage. The burl that I sent you for scales the other week this is the bigger half. The thing that's nice about turning is nothing is ever the same twice, even production bowls are always a bit different. So your always doing something different, using different skill sets, style's ect... About 14" wide and 8" high. This was a fun one.

 

[Redmeadow Knives]

That's gonna be a beautiful piece, that burl has great figure to it.

If by "fun one" you mean "Insane RPM's of puckering fear", then I agree.