Drop Point Hunter: This is one from my personal collection. Here you can see the beautiful, rich sheath leather which is hand tooled and sewn. Madpoet did a GREAT job on his sheaths!
Drop Point Hunter: The same knife shown above. This knife has a 5" D-2 blade made from old lumber mill planer blade stock. The handle scales are goncalo alves and the pins are brass. This is the simplest, most comfortable handle I've ever felt. Really amazing work.
Drop Point Hunter: One last shot of my Drop Point knife. This one shows Mel's trademark fileworked "M" maker's mark. He traded this knife to me for some bicycle parts he needed. I'm glad I made that trade with him.
Tanto #1: This is one of the three custom blades I had Mel do for me. This one was warped in heat treating, which gave rise to Tanto #2 below. It has a 7" blade of D-2 with a 5" handle. The scales are granadillo wood. Mel made the blade and I did the rest. It was a good way to appreciate how much work goes into each knife! The concept was of a traditional style Japanese blade shape with a more utilitarian handle. Mel was the only guy who could pull it off as well as he did, in my opinion.
Tanto #1: This is a detail shot of the etching I did on Tanto #1. It is the Japanese character "Yume" which translates to English as "dream."
Tanto #1: A detail shot of the mosaic pins I made for Tanto #1. They are black epoxy, a large brass tube, and three small copper tubes.
Tanto #2: This "tanto" was the knife Mel sent as a replacement for the warped Tanto #1. Mel had thrown the drawing for the first one out, and this was about three weeks later, so I told him to go ahead and do it from memory. The result is pretty interesting, and not a tanto at all, but I still gave it that name to keep it consistent. You can see more of a drop point and a slightly recurved edge. It handles fantastic! Once again, I got another opportunity to do all the finish work on this great blade.
Tanto #2: This is a detail of the etching from Tanto #2. The Chinese characters are the female form of the word "phoenix." I gave this knife that name because our beloved 2 year old Golden Retriever, Phoenix, was succumbing to metastasized bone cancer for the time I worked on that knife. She was a very special dog, and it was a very special knife, so I finished it in her honor. It has black linen Micarta handles and maroon nylon spacer material under the scales. The blade is just shy of 7" with a 5" handle. D-2, of course. The pins are stainless steel, as is the thing hole liner.
Tanto #2: Mel surprised me on the three kit blades he made by putting my initial in place of his on the spine. You can see the "A" from my last name fileworked here, readable from either side. It was a nice touch and he did it without my even asking. Just another testament of what type of guy Mel was.
Chinese Utility Knife: This knife is a fixed-blade version of the traditional Mandarin pattern that is being popularized by Bob Lum. The blade is D-2.
Chinese Utility Knife: I used black canvas Micarta for the handles, stainless steel pins, and more mosaic pins that I also made.
Chinese Utility Knife: This etching is in Chinese again and roughly translates to "utility knife." Clever, eh? I think it was a pretty set of characters and did just the trick to liven up this otherwise simple knife.
