Matthew Gregory
Chief Executive in charge of Entertainment
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2005
- Messages
- 5,997
Many moons ago, I threw my narrow butt in the car to make the trip west to John Doyle's house in order to witness his methods. I've always adored his attention to detail and sense of style. We ended up collaborating on one of his superb hunters. The path to that blade lies here, in this thread:
Matt Gregory/John Doyle collaboration project...
Last November, I retraced my path across the lower fringes of Canada to once again spend a week in the Doyle household, this time to work on a pair of blades in a style I tend to frequent, with the intention that we'd each take a blade and add our own signature touches to them. Along the way, we had lots of ups and downs, outrageously bizarre weather patterns, good discussions on cold morning hikes, cheetos ground into the seat of a loaner car, vegetables exploding... I even managed to demonstrate just how bad I am at bowling.
The plan was to base a pair of blades on my large 'aikuchi' pattern, a Japanese fusion style featuring a smallish guard or tsuba. For this project, John suggested we use two of his favorite materials for hardware, bronze and black G10, and I provided some staggeringly beautiful stabilized Hawaiian Koa cut from a single thick block I acquired from Bladeforum's very own B billf
As it happened, very little was achieved on either of our blades during the six days I was there.
Due to strange agents of fortune and elements beyond our control, we were forced to abandon the blades we'd initially started with, and John quickly profiled out another blade so that I could mark it while I was still present, and then I drove home to begin the process anew on a blade in my shop. Life got in the way for both of us, until a few weeks ago when John surprised me with a photo of his nearly completed blade, and I had to get my butt in gear!!!!!
I really get the best part of this, because as I was finishing mine up, John's completed blade arrived in the mail so that I could attempt to photograph the pair, once mine was completed. This gave me the opportunity to enjoy this knife for a while, before it gets shipped out for a REAL photo shoot and then on to their final home.
My choice of steel was .200" thick Crucible CPM-3v, which I'd initially applied a full hand satin finish to and despised - did not look right. Just looked formless, to me, so I reground the primary bevel and left it in a clean machine satin finish, adding just a slight touch of convexity to it.
My initial thoughts were to try to complement John's superb filework, but frankly that's a fool's errand - anything I could manage to do would merely look like third-rate work next to such fantastic detail. Instead, I figured I'd stick to my normal design elements, but add a couple unique quirks to it. The bronze seppa features a touch of 'neko gaki' or 'cat scratch', a first for me, but certainly not the last:
Continuing with the theme, I made a small tsuba in black G10 to complement the seppa, and added a bronze spacer and a thin black G10 spacer before shaping the handle.
The handle is similar in profile to most of my knives like this, with a flared butt and a coffin shape, but this time I translated the scallops of the seppa and tsuba to the flats of the handle, producing a slight hollow at the junction of the spacers and tsuba and widening and flaring to the butt to match the lines of the handle. A simple black pin affixes it all together.
Here are the final results - I won't kid you, photographing two blades with dissimilar finishes is, perhaps, the finest definition of 'futility' I can think of. With any luck, a good friend will agree to doing a better job of this than I have, and I'll add the results to this thread, should he choose not to tell me to pound salt.
This was a fantastic project - as John put it. "It's cool to see how both blades differ, but are still clearly a set."
Hopefully he'll chime in here in a little bit to add the details of his blade, but as it's a holiday weekend, I'm hoping he takes a while, and that he's having fun stuffing his kids full of Easter candy.
Thanks for looking!
Matt Gregory/John Doyle collaboration project...
Last November, I retraced my path across the lower fringes of Canada to once again spend a week in the Doyle household, this time to work on a pair of blades in a style I tend to frequent, with the intention that we'd each take a blade and add our own signature touches to them. Along the way, we had lots of ups and downs, outrageously bizarre weather patterns, good discussions on cold morning hikes, cheetos ground into the seat of a loaner car, vegetables exploding... I even managed to demonstrate just how bad I am at bowling.
The plan was to base a pair of blades on my large 'aikuchi' pattern, a Japanese fusion style featuring a smallish guard or tsuba. For this project, John suggested we use two of his favorite materials for hardware, bronze and black G10, and I provided some staggeringly beautiful stabilized Hawaiian Koa cut from a single thick block I acquired from Bladeforum's very own B billf
As it happened, very little was achieved on either of our blades during the six days I was there.
Due to strange agents of fortune and elements beyond our control, we were forced to abandon the blades we'd initially started with, and John quickly profiled out another blade so that I could mark it while I was still present, and then I drove home to begin the process anew on a blade in my shop. Life got in the way for both of us, until a few weeks ago when John surprised me with a photo of his nearly completed blade, and I had to get my butt in gear!!!!!
I really get the best part of this, because as I was finishing mine up, John's completed blade arrived in the mail so that I could attempt to photograph the pair, once mine was completed. This gave me the opportunity to enjoy this knife for a while, before it gets shipped out for a REAL photo shoot and then on to their final home.
My choice of steel was .200" thick Crucible CPM-3v, which I'd initially applied a full hand satin finish to and despised - did not look right. Just looked formless, to me, so I reground the primary bevel and left it in a clean machine satin finish, adding just a slight touch of convexity to it.
My initial thoughts were to try to complement John's superb filework, but frankly that's a fool's errand - anything I could manage to do would merely look like third-rate work next to such fantastic detail. Instead, I figured I'd stick to my normal design elements, but add a couple unique quirks to it. The bronze seppa features a touch of 'neko gaki' or 'cat scratch', a first for me, but certainly not the last:
Continuing with the theme, I made a small tsuba in black G10 to complement the seppa, and added a bronze spacer and a thin black G10 spacer before shaping the handle.
The handle is similar in profile to most of my knives like this, with a flared butt and a coffin shape, but this time I translated the scallops of the seppa and tsuba to the flats of the handle, producing a slight hollow at the junction of the spacers and tsuba and widening and flaring to the butt to match the lines of the handle. A simple black pin affixes it all together.
Here are the final results - I won't kid you, photographing two blades with dissimilar finishes is, perhaps, the finest definition of 'futility' I can think of. With any luck, a good friend will agree to doing a better job of this than I have, and I'll add the results to this thread, should he choose not to tell me to pound salt.
This was a fantastic project - as John put it. "It's cool to see how both blades differ, but are still clearly a set."
Hopefully he'll chime in here in a little bit to add the details of his blade, but as it's a holiday weekend, I'm hoping he takes a while, and that he's having fun stuffing his kids full of Easter candy.
Thanks for looking!