last weekend was helping to host a hammer-in when i wasn't teaching, I made a small "whisky bowl" out of a ball bearing. holds about 1.25 oz safely, more if you're willing to spill some. after most of the folks went home, I was handed a piece of mystery tool steel hex bar and told to make something - so I hammered this out, took it home, profiled and added bevels, then wrapped the handle before giving it back to the guy Sunday at breakfast. this weekend i made a second, slightly larger drinking bowl out of a chunk of 3/4" mild bar around 3" long -- which gave me room for a sacrificial tang to hold onto while shaping. the first one nests inside it and the new one holds up to 2 oz/50mL
made an axe - twice. started with a 6" chunk of leaf spring 3" wide by 3/4" thick. forged everything out by hand and was almost done with the cleanup grinding - when I found the cracks on both sides. cut it down and made an ulu/herb knife out of the bit, then reforged the head into a smaller but similarly shaped head. went from 7x5.5 to 6x4.25 and half the weight. ended up right at 40 oz with the overlong helve. (some super hard and really smelly S.A. hardwood) 38" to the bottom of the eye, 41" to the tip - REALLY slicey - cut down a couple of small nuisance locust trees with minimal effort. good height to use as a fokos
I really like my little Paki Mini-tracker, but the sheath is crap. So I crafted my own. It is cheap, but sure is a lot of fun to play with!
proof of concept piece (and proof that not everything I make is necessarily sharp out of the gate) RR spike and 14 ga stainless scrap turned into a trowel.
