12/1/2007
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We had a large Thanksgiving dinner at our house, with a lot of the family over. The two new Granddaughters are doing well and we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our next Grandchild. Our daughter Tara is due to deliver in the next few weeks, so we will be making a trip to Tulsa to attend that event.
Surprisingly, we are behind in decorating the house for Christmas. Christmas is Mary’s favorite time of year and we usually get all of our Christmas decorations out right after Thanksgiving. But, we have been quite busy the last couple of weeks, so we only have three of our four Christmas trees up and we have yet to put up the outside decorations. We have a 9 foot tree in the living room that is decorated with Victorian ornaments. Mary collects Pillsbury stuff, so she has a Pillsbury tree in the kitchen and I collect John Deere stuff so I have a John Deere tree in the office. We usually put up another tree in the family room with “fun” decorations, but it has yet to be done. The weather is supposed to be nice this week, so maybe we can get the outside decorating done. We’ll see……..
I have caught up somewhat on the gunsmithing, in that I have fewer guns waiting repairs, at this time. But, I have a couple of large gun projects in the shop right now and will have to get on them soon.
The Oklahoma Knife Show was a bit of a disappointment for many of the makers that were there; in that attendance and sales were down. There were just too many other things going on around Oklahoma City that weekend and the weather was too nice for people to consider spending the weekend inside. The date for the 2008 show has been moved to September 13th and 14th to avoid the events that are happening in OKC during the first weekend of November. This is a great show with a lot of high quality work being presented. It will become one of the best in the country; once we find a weekend that is convenient to the knife buying public. The show was good for me, because the dagger that I made for the Master Bladesmith test won the "Best Art Knife" award.
I just finished a custom knife order with a handle material that I had never worked before. It is one of my Cimarron Hunter models with a mammoth tooth handle. This material has areas in it that are extremely hard, adjacent to areas that are very soft. I found the mammoth tooth to be very difficult to work with and that made it labor intensive to construct that type of handle design. I would be willing to use mammoth tooth again, but there would have to be an up-charge for the extra time required to work it. The knife turned out to be one of the prettiest knives that I have made in this model. It is pictured on the “Knife Gallery” page of this site.
My current knife project is a collaboration knife that I am making with Jean-Paul Thevenot. Jean-Paul is the first Master Bladesmith from France. Jean-Paul passed the Master’s Test with me this last June, in Atlanta. The knife will be donated for auction at the 2008 Blade show in Atlanta. Jean-Paul made the blade for this knife and I will be making the handle and fittings. The blade is 11 inches long, with a straight spine. I am planning to make the handle out of ebony, with checkered ivory inserts inletted into the palm areas of the handle. The guard will be a “D” guard style of sculptured steel. I have the ivory inserts inletted into the ebony and am ready to do the checkering on them. I hope to have the knife finished by the end of December. I am really pushing my skills with this knife. Once the knife is finished and photographed, I will of course have pictures of it on this site.
To all I wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
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