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Before I sent the first built of my Kukri III custom knife model to my friend @JAMZT53 I showed the knife around. It was admired by many people, friends, and family – so I quickly got another order for that knife in my books.

After I finished the Longbow I tried a different way to organize my work and started to work on multiple knives at the same time. I began making another PB, Tigershark, and Kukri III model at the same time and planned to switch whenever I had the motivation for a specific step of knife making.

While doing so life hit me and I found myself in the middle of switching my daytime job. Don’t get me wrong, the step was planned and long overdue but it brought a lot of changes to my life. With a lot more responsibility and freedom of making decisions, sculpting an entire IT department from the ground up and such. It is honestly an awesome job and it was absolutely the right decision.

As a result, I simply did not have the focus on handcrafting and coming back home late, and then go to my workshop and work on a knife. So knife making got a bit off my schedule. I was all the time looking forward to diving back into it though but even on the weekends, I could not find the time and energy for it.

Times have changed, I “arrived” in the new job and I got a lot of very positive feedback from my new boss and I am obviously doing one or two things right there. That put a lot of wind under my wings and additionally then came the Corona lockdown and we are all working from home. That took away all the commuting to and from work. In the end, I am working a lot more on my job from the home office and on the other hand, I am finding back my way into knife making on the weekends or finishing one or two steps in the evening. And also: It got warmer since spring is here – the small radiator just does not warm up the workshop so nicely when it is cold outside 🙂

So here I am back, with a finished Kukri III on my table, working on the sheath and pushing things forward to deliver the knife, which by the way came out quite good. I am happy with the final result and look forward to seeing the reaction of the one who ordered it.

The Bowies I made till now were with wide recurved blade design. I like the form a lot but I saw a lot of knifemakers doing a very slim design for their Bowie blades. I also wanted to make a bigger knife to see how far I can go. The main challenge is not grinding a bigger blade into shape but the size of my forge and the containment of the heat treatment oil.

While I planned the new knife, my friend Joe asked me to make another knife for him. This time I should do it completely free as I like and put as much into the knife as I want. When working with and for Joe he always gives me complete creative freedom, but this time I also suggested the knife model. That was perfect timing.

I showed him the draft and he liked it. So I started with the project and got the shape into the steel. I was totally amazed when I held the rough blade in my hand for the first time. The ergonomy of the handle was on point. I don’t know if I have a good sense of handles or it is pure luck. But I like how I can grip the handle with the full fist or put the thumb on the back on the spine of the blade and up to the thumb stop.

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I showed Joe pictures of the progress and I felt how he began to love the blade after he just liked it at first. He told me he would love to have a green handle. I had seen nice colored wood at a german online dealer for knife makers. And I showed him the exact piece of stabilized green poplar burl. That stuff looks like jade marble. He liked it and so I ordered it.

The piece of wood looked even better when you see it live – but it made me very nervous to cut the wood into halves. The knife would have a full tang so I needed two parts. I have had some problems getting perfect straight cuts on my bandsaw before. I practiced with some pieces of wood – and it went much better than expected. So I cut the stabilized wood in half and sanded it perfectly flat on a piece of sandpaper that lay flat on my workbench.

The wood left neon green wood dust everywhere – even more, when I started shaping the handle. My workshop looked like an alien landing zone with all the green stuff around. Good, I got my respirator.

As always I left the handle a bit thicker. A big knife like the Longbow needs a handle you can grip on.

The blade is polished to a mirror finish – and I don’t know why but this went pretty good this time. Usually, I have a tough time getting all the scratches out of the wood but this went pretty easy this time.

Until now I worked on one knife at a time but I always strive to find the best way for me to work on my projects. Working on one knife at a time meant, for example, to fire up the forge to heat treat just a single knife, it would be much more efficient to harden more knives at a time. Or to carve out the blanks for multiple knives at a time instead of just one and then have to switch tools and so on.

On the other hand, I want to keep the passion I put in every single project – Concentrating on the details that make every single knife unique. To make sure I do not loose this I will allow myself to jump between the projects and push on the parts of the single projects that I am most motivated in.

Currently, I have 4 knife projects in parallel active. I am working on the “Longbow” Bowie knife, another Kukri III, a new Tigershark hunting knife and the PB skinner but with a thicker blade. I started all blades at the same time but now the Longbow is finished for etching and I have a beautiful piece of stabilized wood for it here. All other blades are heat treated and ready to be cleaned up. Only the skinner is already partly ground clean from the filthy remains of the hardening oil.

For a long time, I had a picture in my mind of a hunting knife with a constant flowing line from the tip of the blade to the heel of the handle. A simple but appealing knife form that also serves perfectly as an EDC.

My first design was quickly drafted on the PC, but when it comes to dimensions and proportions a desktop screen is not the best solution so I always print it on paper and cut it out – and oh boy that blade was too big for an EDC. So I shortened my design and brought that onto the steel blank.

I asked my younger son (10) what would be a nice name for a blade and he made some suggestions. One was “Hai”, English “Shark” and I thought about the Serpent Wood I had in mind for the handle and with those stripes could be tiger stripes – so I said “Tigerhai”, English Tigershark and we agreed.

Learnings

I learned a lot while making this blade. One goal was to try to do as many steps as possible on the belt grinder instead of lengthy hand sanding. The mistake was, that I went too far using a rough 40 grit belt while shaping the bevels so I ended up with a thin blade with still deep scratches. I managed to grind out most of them then went to etch my maker’s mark and the “Tigershark” logo into the blade. First of all the logo had too wide letters – this makes it harder to get a consistent and clean etching. I ran into a second problem because I had etched too early and while cleaning up the surface of the blade ground out too much of the etching.

I have had problems with the micarta liners while gluing the layers directly to the wood. The wood soaks up the epoxy and starts bending, then the epoxy gets dry and the wood stays bent. It is close to impossible to bend back the handle scales – I tried that. This time I made the Micarta liners separately and then drilled and glued steel, Micarta liners, and wood together in one step. Also, I used screw clamps for more pressure than simple clamps and that did the trick to get a perfect flat connection between steel and handle scales.

Feedback I got

A friend of mine is a professional hunter and I did not know he is also a passionate collector of knives and he did not know rom me that I am a passionate maker of knives. He got very interested in my work and i showed him around in my small workshop.

He liked the Tigershark a lot and gave me some good tips on how I could improve the knife, especially the handle I was shaping at that time. I was able to let his suggestions influence the final shape of the knife and he and I like the final result.

Conclusion

I like the blade shape and the look of the wood and will take this design into my repertoire of blades I will continue to make. This knife has its flaws so I am not sure if I will keep it for my own or just wait for an offer that I like. Either way, I will make a sheath for it later.