The learning never ends.

I'm always struggling with wanting to move forward before I'm ready to. Call it impatience. I really want to, at the very least, be able to create san-mai billets dependably without problems. I don't have a forging press, or a power hammer, so it's just me and eyeballing for the correct temperature when the billet is in the forge and then both setting the forge welds, and drawing out the billets correctly with a hammer and my anvil.

It would be a lot easier if I were forty years younger.

So for now, I'm going to try to stick with monosteel knives, and work on the finer details, like decent sanding, and better bevel grinding.

The problem is, it still feels like a lot of work, for something that isn't particularly impressive.

This latest knife was made from a 1 1/2" wife sheet of 1084 that I transferred a paper template onto.

From there, I spent the next part of the project at my porta-bandsaw and then my belt grinder to profile the shape and get ready to start grinding bevels.

I even broke down and bought a vinyl cutter so I could start etching my maker's mark into these creations.

Finally, I heat-treated the blade, and surprised myself that nothing warped afterward, but then I've spoken too soon haven't I? After tempering the knife looked like a banana. I decided, I hadn't yet built a straightening jig for my bench vise, and just accepted that I'd snap this one in half when trying to straighten it out, but surprisingly it worked really well, and while there may still be a tiny warp, you'd have to be looking for it to notice it.

I don't yet have the skills I want, but I can at least admit that slowly, so slowly, but surely, I'm making progress.