Of Teeth and Crafts

I hadn’t been to the dentist in a long time.  Then, last December, I had all my wisdom teeth out, and the dentist mentioned that I had some fillings that needed to be addressed.  So I finally got around to getting them filled, and one of my teeth had cracked (no wonder it hurt when I bit things), so I was going to get a crown, but then the root was bad, so I got a root canal, and am still waiting on the final crown. I also learned that I clench my teeth a lot when I am stressed, so I am trying not to do that , despite the occasional work and home stress.

I still haven’t managed to fire up the forge this YEAR, although I have some ideas.  I figured I should probably make some progress on finishing the knives that have been in progress for a long time.  Lately I’ve been able to use the excuse that it was over 100 degrees outside, and getting even warmer in front of a couple thousand degree fire wasn’t all that appealing, but the rains finally showed up yesterday, so it has cooled off a bit now. 

I did pick up some W2 that I am anxious to try out, since I’ve seen people make such nice temper lines with it. Gives me grand ideas for fancy things, but I should probably stick with something a little smaller to start off with.

I’ve almost made progress on a few of them, but have run into some errors – like forgetting to add the hardener to the inlace on a cholla handled dagger  >:-(  I run into those memory lapses all too often.  I think it is because when I do get to work in the shop, I try to do about 15 things at once, and then I make mistakes. Sigh.

I did manage to finish up the handle on the Spyderco Mule (CruWear).  I like Manzanita a lot, looks pretty J

And I made another Bighorn – this one in Damascus and Desert Ironwood. Fancy!

I also have ALMOST finished AR63 – Just needs its number and design mark. And a couple more coats of finish. And some final touches on the edge of course.

AR63. Koa with steel pins. CruForge V Tanto.

In the lathe-y world of wood turning, I picked up some stylus kits for the iPad world and made a few of them, and a stylus pen too.  Haven’t had a chance to get to the new bolt-action pen kits though.  Maybe next week.

Erica got a fancy new toy (I mean tool) though – a 40W laser cutter.  Too bad it doesn’t work on metal.  It’s pretty cool though, it cuts and engraves lots of things.  So in theory, I could laser engrave stuff on handles and sheaths, but I haven’t tried it yet.  We also have a piece of anodized titanium (courtesy of Pat Pruitt – who does lots of cool things with metal – check out his site), that we are going to try, to see if the laser will do anything to the stuff.

That's all for now folks.