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Having a desire to make something and knowing how to go about it can be quite and experience. I have often looked at custom knives in awe and amazement with what can be done but have never ventured into the knife making world.
Recently I met someone who is an artist and craftsman when it comes to making knives and all you have to do is look at his work to see why. Peter Demmer is a Canadian knife maker who has brought his European Craftsman skills to the art of knife making. Peter makes all sorts of knives from custom Chef Carving Knives, to hunting, fishing and survival knives and even to everyday utility type knives, you can see more here www.terrierblades.com
Recently I invited myself to his workshop to make a video for our viewers on the art of custom knife making and Peter walked us through the entire process from beginning to end.
He started off by showing me how the shape of the steel is cut with a high-speed water jet tool, to create the basic shape of the blade and handle. The material he uses is special stainless steel that he purchase in large sheets. Once the basic shape of the knife is set out, the next step is to temper the steel which requires a special technique ...
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Every woodworker loves to receive FREE WOOD, such as pallet wood. But like most things that are free, there is a catch and that catch is the free wood can dull or even ruin some of your good woodworking blades so special precautions are needed. Even after you have dis-assembled a pallet, and you think you have removed all the screws and nails, there could still be some left that only a woodworking metal detector will find (click read more to see links) ... OR, even worse, there are almost always little rocks and dirt that are ground into the wood that will dull or ruing a blade instantly.
I love to use pallet wood for certain projects, it gives a great look with little work, but most often when I am using pallet wood I will only use my circular saw, my jig saw and my reciprocating saw. Blades for these units are reasonably prices and easy to get. I NEVER run pallet wood through my jointer, planer or bandsaw, and only occasionally with a throw-away blade will I use my table saw.
To me, the trick with making pallet furniture is to make it look elegant, despite being made from pallet wood. In the case of making this bookshelf, in order to make the bookshelf look less clunky, we decided to change up the end pieces ....
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Cold Bluing a rifle barrel is not strictly a woodworking project, but since it relates to the whole aspect of gun restoration, and because we actually did cold blue the barrel, we are covering it here. Bluing is a process to help prevent rusting of exposed steel and is sometimes used on some woodworking tools as well.
We are of the belief that hot bluing is the best, at least in my experience, but it is also somewhat complicated and needs special equipment to do, OR you need to find someone who does this and again in my experience, it is not cheap.
The other thing that needs to be noted up front, is that I have seen some pretty crappy hot blued barrels and receiver plates, not because the bluing was all that bad, but because the preparation of the metal was poor. If the metal is not polished and cleaned properly it doesn't matter what kind of bluing you put on, the finished product will not look good.
To that end, we made sure that the barrel was extremely well sanded and prepared before we ever started the bluing process. In our case we were using Outers Gun Blue Kit, a product we had never used before, so were quite interested to see how it performed, and we were ....
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I have always maintained that farmers are the most innovative people on the planet, so maybe I have some farmer in me too. I often seem to be coming up with ideas or at least bringing a couple of different ideas together such as this one. I have no idea if someone else has ever done this, I'm sure they have, it's not that far fetched, but it does work great ... AND for someone it could even be a bit of a cottage industry. I could easily see someone making these little boxes and selling them at produce markets, swap meets and flea markets. They are cool little project and they could even save someone's life.
I don't actually have plans for this except what I have told everyone in the video. This was another fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants project. I only knew a one thing, the numbers need to be bold and about 5 inches or 12 cm high so with that ....