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Greenhorn
posted
Ok.. let me start this thread by saying I truly admire the work I see on this page. This link is home to some fine craftsman. But let me add that I am not one of them! However what I lack in skill I more than make up for in persistance. Yesterday, after finishing a small knife I had made with a deer antler handle I looked at it .. and then at some knives on here and almost chucked it away. But then I thought, even in the older times there must have been those who just never caught on to the finer skills needed to create this stuff. And I'm sure most buckskinners never had the means to go buy a finely crafted knife . So I started today to make a sheath or the sad little guy. It too won't be a work of art either but 'Hey' maybe I was meant to be the Fred Sanford of the good 'ole days. But it's sharp, tempered and useable and I enjoyed doing it and that has to count for something!

 
Posts: 49 | Location: Ohio | Registered: 22 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
Picture of captchee
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looks good to me smokepole .
i was once told that very few people are good at every aspect of a given art .
while i dont do knives , it think maybe they are alot like guns . some folks are good at the whiete work , others wood work . but seldom both .

looks like a good usable knife to me
 
Posts: 687 | Location: Payette ,Idaho | Registered: 23 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
Picture of Pilgrim
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"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"


"Any day you wake up on the right side of the dirt is a good day"
 
Posts: 428 | Location: Northwestern California | Registered: 05 May 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of Talltree
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Smokepole 51
The statement of "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" rings very true. Think about this, before our creation could run to a store or to a computer to purchase needed items, I.E. knives, needed farm implements, jars, and whatever, man/woman usually had to produce a needed item with their own hands. They used whatever was at hand to come up with needed items. Look back in our history and you will see how man had to endure, as far back as the 1930,40's and even into the 50's. Of course when we speak of the "Black Powder" days life was not a "run to a store" time. What I am getting at, is even if a hand made instrument or an item was needed it was made by the individual and most of the time it was not a beauty but functional. Personally if I am in need of something, I am going to try and procure it with my own hands. I will admit though, I accept that I live in a modern time, but my mind thought is still of days gone by.

Don't ever run down what you, yourself have made. It is a "Beauty in your own eye"

Talltree

Keep your tail high and dry!
 
Posts: 173 | Location: Oregon Territory | Registered: 11 June 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
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I think that knife looks good and I like the handle. I think some of that style had a half tang and a saw cut into the front end of the handle into which the half tang fit.
 
Posts: 54 | Registered: 14 November 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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What's that blade made of? Been kickin' the idee around of making one or two m'self. Kinda like your'n, simple, useable.

Fiddlesticks


As long as there's Limb Bacon a man'll eat! (But mebbe not his wife...)
 
Posts: 4816 | Location: Buffalo River Country | Registered: 23 October 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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Mine was a spur of the moment thing.. blade was made out of a broken power hacksaw blade. been reading some posts about using files and since I just retired I have a couple buckets of those sittin' around may give that a try maybe one of those knife/striker combos. hmm maybe a brake drun forge first though..

Don't trust what don't rust !
 
Posts: 49 | Location: Ohio | Registered: 22 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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Keep at it, you might have to larn me something!

Fiddlesticks


As long as there's Limb Bacon a man'll eat! (But mebbe not his wife...)
 
Posts: 4816 | Location: Buffalo River Country | Registered: 23 October 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Looks good to me. I am also not particularly good at most crafts. Seems to me that folks who lived far away from towns and lacked funds back then just figured a way to make something that would work. Maybe mine are not craftsman quality but they do the job.

BC


"Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad."
Thomas Paine
 
Posts: 649 | Location: Oregon | Registered: 27 June 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Hivernant
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I would rather carry yours than anything Ive seen by Gill Hibben, Spyderco or any of those 'collector knives' you see on cable.
 
Posts: 129 | Location: Southern California | Registered: 28 April 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
Picture of andy*
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Good looking knife you made there. You took a broken item and turned it into something useful.
Carry and use it with pride.
Andy


Follow me I am the Infantry
 
Posts: 668 | Location: Everson, Washington | Registered: 27 June 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
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There is something to be said of simply making an item with your own hands. I've had some fun working with a box of old files that set me back a whole dollar at the local flea market, but they don't yet look as good as your's does.


" You do with your scalp as you wish and don't be telling us what to with ours."
 
Posts: 158 | Location: lake champlain, vt | Registered: 03 January 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Works for me.
 
Posts: 1487 | Location: Mountain Home, Arkansas | Registered: 08 October 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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Does it cut? Does it hold an edge? Is the blade strong? Then what's not to like?

Don't confuse the top of an artform, which has then been carefully preserved and displayed, with the more common, utilitarian items of their day..., as said common items were beloved when the owner was in the middle of nowhere, and all there was for the emergency was rather crude but highly useful tool.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and also sometimes within the hand of the wielder.

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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I'm satisfied that thie things I make will do the job they are intended for. But I sure do like the finer ones too. I trully enjoy watching a true craftsman at work.
 
Posts: 49 | Location: Ohio | Registered: 22 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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i think it looks great,and you had the satisfaction of making it yourself.the 18 and 19 century was not a cash rich society for most people,so a lot off stuff you made yourself or if you could not make it you traded for it with something you could make.it is a fine knife.there is a lot of similar knives in the madison grant book.
 
Posts: 19 | Location: england | Registered: 17 October 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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Well thanks guys .. I've always said Anything un-attempted remains impossible! And there are only two things I have found impossible so far .. Striking a damp match on a wet marshmallow and stretching a knats a_ _ over a rain barrel! So I’ll keep on tryin’


Don’t trust what don’t rust !
 
Posts: 49 | Location: Ohio | Registered: 22 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
Picture of Josh Crain
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Hey, Smokepole: if you keep making knives, you'll get better and better and before you know it, you'll be turning out some really good stuff. And like Shoshone said, I too would much rather carry a knife like yours than any of the "collector knives" that are for sale to-day (i.e. Coldsteel knives and the like.)


"Return unto me, and I will return unto you," saith the Lord of hosts.
~Malachi 3:7b
 
Posts: 297 | Location: MI | Registered: 18 August 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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