Kevin's "Other" hobby.

[Kevin in California]

For George's sake......
One of mine.

Kevin

[George]

That is a beautiful knife Kevin!!!

It was a good idea to move this subject to another thread. Don't want to hijack Jack's construction post.

I used to be Dr. Carters motorcycle mechanic back in the early 90’s. I worked at a small Harley Dealership outside of Wichita Falls, Texas that had an open door policy. Fred used to come in and hangout while I worked. We had a lot of very interesting conversations on various subjects including motocycles, botany, machine work, travel, etc… It was obvious that he was very intelligent and interesting but I had no idea who he was in the knife making world. Someone told me he made knives so the next time he came to the shop I told him my brother-in law had given my dad a knife made by D. Holder. That got Fred to talking about knives and his trips to Japan. It became apparent that he was among the who’s who in knife making.

To make a long story short, I ask if I could come check out his shop. That led to him inviting me back to build the two knives I pictured in the other thread. They were built using Fred’s equipment and with his oversight. He’s a great guy. I ended up moving to Corpus Christi to work at another dealership and haven’t seen Fred since. I’ve made a few knives to give away as gifts but do not consider myself a true knife maker. Just a lucky guy who had the chance to meet and hangout with a famous knife maker. I’ve hung on to these two knives for their sentimental value.

George

[Kevin in California]

Very cool story. You should continue as a maker, your work looks good.
I use to be more prolific, now I make a couple or 3 a year as the guitar building has pretty much taken over the knifemaking shop.
I find a use in this new hobby for my high speed belt grinder. But the Paragon furnace sits unused most of the time. I haven't found a need to "cook" my guitar wood yet, but I see Dave has brought up the subject of "Thermalized wood" so maybe I could put the heat treat oven to work yet in my guitar building.

Kevin

[George]

I definitely have more experience with metal than wood. I’ve got about anything needed as far as mechanic, welding and machine work goes but I’m in the process of tooling up to build acoustic guitars. I’ve wanted to scratch build for a long time but kept putting it off. Now I’m jumping in with both feet.

I’ll get a few kit builds under my belt then start looking where to buy tonewood billets and let the resawing begin.

George

[TonyinNYC]

There is a guy at the OLF who makes blades. He made a Damascus steel brace carving chisel as a prize for the $150 build challenge. You can read the thread here:

luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10133&t=37220&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

It is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while.
KevininCA, next time you make a knife, you should do a build thread. I watched a whole bunch of knife making videos on YouTube a few weeks ago and I was really close to attempting to make one as a gift for my brother. Then I realized that guitar building takes up pretty much all of my free time so I dropped that idea! I also don't have any tools for knife making except a file or two. It really looks like fun though.

[dave d]

Wow - knife-making is another awesome hobby, and Kevin you have done some great work there too.

Amazing photos at that link Tony. Yikes, that's a lot of work. Beautiful result.

Reminds me of the craftsmanship I saw at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paCyA9ypEOE.