2011 Knife Sale

UPDATE: I am now accepting Visa and Mastercard through Square. That may make things a little easier on everyone. Also, the big upswept blade is no longer for sale. It has been reground into something more primitive.

I figure it is about time that I do two things. #1. Take better product photos. #2. Put some of my knives on sale.

Here we go.

Mini Kiridashi

1084FG Stock Removal

Upswept Blade

Vintage 2009 Slim Blade

Vintage 2009 Utility Knife

Top to bottom:

Mini Kiridashi – 1084FG steel, kydex keeper sheath, $40+shipping

Stock Removal Knife – 1084FG steel, no sheath, $100+shipping

Upswept Knife – 1084FG steel, no sheath, $200+shipping

Vintage 2009 Slim Blade – W1 tool steel, Sherry Lott belt sheath, $120+shipping

Vintage 2009 Utility Knife – W1 tool steel, black sock scabbard, hadori polish, $100+shipping

For questions or to purchase, please email me at muchsharpernow@gmail.com. I accept PayPal.

Rock For Sale

Bear with me, this is a mouthful.

Honyama Renge Uchigumori Koppa Toishi. There is also some phantom Karasu present. Without the Japanese, this is a polishing grade, natural water stone. The red and orange speckles are considered to be a sign of an excellent polishing stone. I may be mistaken, but that is a characteristic of Uchigumori stones from the Ohira mine.

As per usual, I’ve put the stone to use so that I can tell you more about it. If you’re polishing swords, this is an example of the last stone you’ll use prior to moving on to using hazuya and jizuya. It’s near-mirror polish and splendidly smooth to use. (It will produce a reflective scratch pattern, but not the ultra smooth perfect mirror surface that you’d expect on chrome.) However, because it is a Koppa stone (unfinished sides) you wouldn’t want to use it for swords.

Kitchen knives, razors, and carpentry tools are where this one would excel.

The photos are for scale. The pad is a 9 inch wide pad, so the stone is somewhat over 9 inches long, and well over 3 inches at the widest. Pardon my dirty index finger in the width photo.

Top view

Width approx. 0.5 in. to .625 in.

Backside

Price: $240 No longer being offered for sale.

First for sale of 2010-Temporarily Off Sale-Sold

Left Side

Right Side

This blade, as I mentioned in the previous post, is recycled lawnmower blade shaped by stock removal rather than forging. The blade length is about 4 inches (I don’t have it in front of me to measure it) and is held in the socket by the brass pin alone, similar to Japanese blades. The bolster, however, was cast in place out of tin-silver alloy and is quite attached to the blade. There’s a leather spacer between the bolster and the wood, just to keep things tight.

I made a simple black veg-tan riveted belt sheath for it as well.

$60+shipping.

1/28/10 Update: I’m taking it off the market because I need to repair the handle after another session of obsessive polishing.

The First November Knife Sale!

I’ve got INVENTORY for the first time, as a knifemaker. The thing about inventory is that you really should get it moving from time to time, so I thought I might have a sale.

To keep this from being a really long entry with large photos, I’ve uploaded the photos to my Picasa.

The specs and stats are here. Prices do not include shipping.

W-1 Tool Steel Utility: hand forged blade with hamon (hybrid polish). OAL: 7.5″, blade 3″. The handle is Wenge with kangaroo leather turks head and tsukamaki. The blade could be removed by tapping out the small silver pin. $120

O-1 Tool Steel Shiv: hand forged blade, unsigned, rough polished, showing temper colors. 9.5″ OAL, 4″ blade.Paracord handle wrap. $100

Recycled Lawnmower Blade: says it all, really. Stock removal, triple tempered, with a small hamon area. 8.5″ OAL, 3.75″ blade. The blade collar and cap on the back of the white tail antler handle are sterling silver. $120

Double Edge Boot Knife: hand forged 1084HC, full hamon with slightly less hard point (similar to traditional Yari), triple tempered. Whitetail antler handle with African Mahogany spacer. Antler crown is carved with a triple spiral (not sh0wn). 9.75″ OAL, 5″ blade. $220

Autumn Green Man: hand forged from a Harbor Freight file (very similar to 1070HC), with hamon, triple tempered. The handle is whitetail antler with African Mahogany fore and aft. The eyes are 4mm Sunstone, and there is a smaller blue Paua Shell inset on the upper handle curve. This knife is a sole authorship piece: I did it all. 8.75″ OAL, 4.75″ blade. $380

Chevy Spring Sgian Dubh: you guessed it! Forged from 1984 Chevy coil spring. Based on how it handled, it is likely a 10XX series steel, rather than a 51XX. The handle wood is something oily and exotic that I got at a knife show. 6.25″ OAL, with an almost 3″ blade. $120 Sold 4/24

Thanks for looking!

Emails should be directed to: threeravensringo@gmail.com

Shobu Sugoro Kiita & Koppa

It’s Sunday here, and the Shobu has not sold. Mine! I’m going to go cut it down into two razor stones and associated extra bits.

A nice fellow in the UK has asked about the koppa, and I’m waiting to hear from him regarding how much material he wants. Knowing that, I thought it would be a good idea to actually get a breakdown of how much of what material I’ve got available to sell.

In slightly over 100g packages, I have 6 Uchigumori Koppa and 4 Narutaki. One of my slabs of Narutaki is presently lost in my workshop, and I suspect that I could wrangle another 100 g. package if I find it.

Same price, with a large variety of sizes of chopped down pieces.

If anyone is interested in one of the resulting razor stones from the Kiita, it will be $20 + shipping. I will post the size of the available piece later today.

The razor stone is 5 inches by 1 inch by 7/8 inch tall. The functional surface is 4 inches long. A section cracked off while sawing through the stone. Resurfacing the toishi yielded more usable area and really reduced the amount of apparent silica clumps. I also flattened down the back side of the stone, which also appears to be useable. If anyone is interested in this piece, I’d be happy to finish flattening the back side in order to have even more surface to use.

Shobu Sugoro Kiita

See this post: http://3ravensmetalcraft.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/shobu-sugoro-kiita-koppa/

This toishi is no longer for sale as a bench stone.

What we have here is a Shobu Sugoro Kiita (yellow stone) from the Aisa stratum. It is a kumori finish stone, rather than an uchigumori. That basically means that it is a step below final polishing. It will give a lovely, regular, slightly smoky, bright polish that shows faint scratch pattern.

This toishi has some issues. The areas on the face of the stone that I circled contain small pockets of glassy silica. If you were to tilt the stone back and forth, you’d see them very clearly. Because of this, there are significant considerations about how this one should be used.

You could, with a carbide saw, section this toishi into two good-sized razor stones and have material left over to use for creating kiita to kiita slurry, or to fracture down into kumori finger stones for detail work. If you were to make razor stones out of the prime areas, I would have no compunction about telling you to use them for sword polishing.

However, if you keep it intact, do not use it for that purpose. Instead, use it to sharpen knives. That is one area where the silica deposits will not impair function or performance.

I will say this, I have not seen a toishi that started cutting steel this quickly outside of the Iyoto that I’ve bought. It absolutely cuts more quickly than the Takashima Karasu, Shobudani Aisa, Green Shobu Sugoro, Narutaki and Ohira Uchigumori that I own. For that reason alone, I am tempted to keep it for myself. However, I am also aware that I need more toishi like I need a hole in my head.

How about this? I’ll offer it for sale until Sunday 11/15, and if no one is interested, I’ll keep it. Sound fair? Alright.

$80 + shipping. Paypal. threeravensringo@gmail.com

Uchigumori and Narutaki koppa

No longer for sale.

 

These two photos are examples of the raw material that are used to make hazuya (gray Uchigumori) and jizuya (khaki Narutaki) finger stones for polishing Japanese blades. I am offering it for sale in quantities of 10 grams for $5, plus shipping. (Multiples of 10g are simple math. For example, you want 100g of Uchi, that’s $50 plus shipping.) My present stock for sale is +/- 500 grams of each koppa. My contact address is threeravensringo@gmail.com. I accept Paypal exclusively.

 

Examples of Uchigumori koppa

 

 

Examples of Narutaki koppa

 

Knives to be available at the event

I’m going to start uploading photos of the knives that will be available at the upcoming event next month. Pardon the poor photos.

Small tool steel knife

Aikuchi in maple shirasaya

1095 claw on copper with beaver tail leather

First hand forged double edged blade

"Karasu" with three ravens menuki

Long stainless steel knife

The prices look like this:

1. The original carved handle knife with Dalmatian wood scabbard: $160 SOLD

2. Small tool steel knife: $100

3. Aikuchi in shirasaya: $140 NFS

4. The claw: $40 SOLD

5. Hand forged double edged knife: $140 Rebuilt

6. “Karasu” (That’s “crow” in Japanese.) with simple leather resting sheath: $140 Sold

7. Simple stainless steel play knife: $40

Knives that aren’t shown, but will be on sale:

1. Alabama Damascus steel tanto neck knife with kydex sheath: $100

2. O-1 tool steel shiv with riveted black leather sheath: $100

3. O-1 tool steel utility with bamboo handle: $60

There might also be a small damascus steel utility knife, but I’m undecided. Sharpening to the customer’s request is included in the price of any of the above knives.