As the title suggests, I finished up with the custom Pride build that I have been working on for the past few weeks. It turned out to be a really stunning knife. Here are the final steps of this build.
The filework on the liners in underway. I decided to do a vine and thorn pattern. It's kind of an elegant pattern for a really beautiful knife.
I know that this photo is terrible, but the filework is now complete.
Here are the parts waiting for the magic to begin. The Timascus parts get heat colored and the plain titanium liners get anodized.
Again, these pics are terrible but you can kind of make out the beautiful purple and blue tones of the Timascus and I went with a gold color for the liners to compliment the gold dots that will be installed in the blade. Coloring titanium, whether by heat or by anodizing really is a magical process.
I polished up the ball on my hammer in preparation for peening in the gold studs into the blade.
Here is the first gold stud after peening in place.
Studs two and three have been hammered in.
And after a spin on the buffer, the pins are domed over and polished up. Looks pretty darn good if I do say so myself. It really was nerve wracking to do this. That gold wire is really expensive, and I didn't want to mess it up. Not to mention that I didn't want to damage the expensive Damasteel blade either. Whew! Mission accomplished.
I use a paint pen to mask off the contact parts on the tang of the blade in preparation for acid etching.
The blade is soaking in the warm acid as the metal is being etched.
And yet another terrible pic, but at least you can kind of see the pattern in the Damasteel blade. It looks much better in person.
Here is the blade getting my maker's mark etched in.
As a final step, all of the visible screw heads get buffed up to a nice shine.
And here is a little better photo of the final knife. The photo really doesn't do it justice, but hey, I'm a knife maker, not a photographer.
Spine view.
The inside is almost as pretty as the outside.
Well, this knife was really a pleasure to build. It will be heading out to its new owner soon. I hope he enjoys it as much as I did making it. Thanks for following along with me on this build. I'm working with a friend of mine to nail down a custom order for him, so the next build will likely be a full tang camp style knife, something a little different from my normal builds. I hope you will check back in soon.
- Brandant Robinson