She wanted unique wood for the handles. I suggested ebony wood but she wanted a variation in color so I suggested desert ironwood. It just so happened I had picked up a pretty good supply of desert ironwood about three years ago at a show. The guy had about 75 pounds of desert ironwood which were cut into links like firewood. He didn't want to haul it back out to his car so he gave me a pretty good deal on it when the show ended.
I didn't realize what a pain in that neck it would be to cut those chunks into knife handles. About three band saw blades later I had enough slabs to make handles for this set. She wanted mosaic pins in the handles, but the knives were only drilled for a 1/8" pins . I had to have the pins custom made by Providian Forge. Sally did a very nice job on the pins.
I ordered the blanks for the knives in March 2014. Several were on backorder and so it was July before I finally got the blanks in my shop. August was spentas caregiver for a friend of mine who came to visit so I really didn't get started on this set of knives until September, though I did have most of the wood cut before then. With a couple trips to the hospital for me, I was way behind schedule to have these done by Christmas. I finally got them finished and shipped out yesterday.
Sorry I didn't get many pictures, but I was really wanting to get them shipped off.
I was tired of them taking up space in my shop.
Here are a couple of pictures that will give you an idea of what they look like.
In this picture you have the following patterns listed from top to bottom:
French chef knife
Santoku
Bread knife
Carving fork
Carving knife
The last three are pairing knives.
Every now and then there are projects that are real challenges.
Not that the knives themselves were a challenge technically, they are fairly simple to make, but working with round chunks of desert ironwood and trying to cut flat slabs and working around the cracks and checking in the wood was a real challenge!
This is one project I was really happy to be finished with just because the amount of time, saw blades and sanding belts it consumed.
That desert ironwood looks awesome. After reading your post I now know why its called ironwood.
