Keith Engel Custom Knives

Wyatt S your knife is in the forge.

15000 grit finished! Put my stamp approval (Makers mark) and then this skull and ghost hamon blade and will be done. Make a sheath and it will be on its way home.

Update on the skull knife: With the scales now to shape, its going to be the slow hand sanding. The pins shown here are temporary.Those will change. So new pins, epoxy the scales onto the blade and hand sand till it's clear again.. Here we're at 800 grit, but after epoxy and actual pin it will go back to 400, work up to 2000 and then polishing.

Scales are still just big slabs BUT its cured enough to work now- we are getting closer! If the blade looks short its not really- just the angle I'm holding it. It's quite well proportioned.

Continuing down the road for Bill's custom knife: he asked for skulls so I'm trying something different. Hopefully it turns out. 3D printed, then each hand painted, followed by a deep epoxy pour. In a happy accident, some of the skulls held air bubbles in the eye sockets and its perfect. Could not have done that if I were actually trying to. Looks like eyeballs! It needs several days to make sure they cure fully.

And there it is- it's been a while since I did a hamon and now I realize why... That's a whole lot of hand sanding! But I hope the result is worth it. Time to shift to handle and this one's going to be well outside of anything I've e done before. Stay tuned! What do you think of that ghost hamon?

Right out of the acid....Im pretty happy with what it's looking like.

Post hardening and heat treat. Yeah- its in there! Now let's get it out- let's find that yurei!

If life is like a box of chocolates- you never know what you're gonna get- then a hamon is even more so....You can't judge by the clay. But this is ready for the heat!

Steel taking shape on a custom for Bill Murphy If you ever watched the TV show fact or faked, or been involved in the paranormal world, the name Bill Murphy will certainly come to mind. Given his paranormal background i've thought we might add some flair- so i've decided to call this knife: Yūrei Hamon. Japanese for "ghost hamon". Until this post Bill had no idea of this plan- hope he likes it.

Well my good friend Bill ordered a custom. He asked for something with skulls. And he liked knife #145. Let's see what we can do. A sketch to start out

Its time to catch up on some projects. This weekend I plan in cleaning the shop and starting on a custom blade for my friend Bill. Stay tuned for progress photos.