Greetings everyone! I've been sending out some updates regarding the long overdue Sheepsfoot knives and the desert ironwood clip knife. I want to offer a sincere apology for this crazy delay, it's all on me as I had an almost impossible time trying to cut nail marks in the blades. It seems we wound up with steel that was cold rolled and not annealed, which resulted in it being almost impossible to machine. This was all new to me so I had to do the trial and error thing trying to work it out. unfortunately there was initially a LOT of error. I sent a message to Larry last week and am copying it here as it pretty much explains everything:
"I really want to apologize for the ridiculous delay. I had tremendous problems trying to cut a nail mark in the steel. It was apparently cold rolled and not annealed, which is not what was initially ordered. Thanks to that it was incredibly hard. I went through several high speed steel cutters and one TiN cutter that I had to special order and still barely scratched the surface. The TiN cutter was especially problematic since I had ordered it in October and it didn't arrive until mid-December. Following that I had to go with a last effort by ordering a carbide cutter, and amazingly it cut the steel. That single issue is basically what caused this entire delay. Had I known this from the start I would have invested in the carbide cutter immediately, but I was unaware of the steel screw up until much later on. They're over $500 apiece! Honestly a lot of this a learning experience for me, especially with these modern stainless steels.
In hindsight I probably should have updated you guys, but seeing as how many problems piled on one after the other, it probably would have just seemed like a continuous stream of excuses. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't. I now have the blades back from grinding, and just finished dressing the tangs and backs along with swedging. All that's left is full polish and then assembling some knives! Again I'm very sorry Larry, six months is inexcusable."
I'm polishing the blades now folks, and should be putting stag on the liners by Wednesday. I'm hoping to have the stag knives completed some time around the beginning of next week, along with the ram's horn knives. Then I'll start right in on the ironwood clip blade knives. Here's a shot of the blades I'm working on now:
Just to be clear Red Hill isn't to blame for the delay at all, they've been just as anxious as everyone else. Any time they tried to give a timeline we wound up with another unexpected delay, like when I thought those TiN cutters would actually work. It was a real nightmare. I'm just totally relieved that it finally worked out, and again I want to apologize to everyone who's been waiting.
All the Best,
Eric