Yeah, I picked up a few jelly rolls of fabrics in blues, aquas and purples to make opal colors for handles to try to attract women to the knives. I can do them in any color fabric, including burlap, denim, duck cloth, canvas, etc. I can do straight stacks of solid colors, alternating colors/layers or camo type swirl patterns as well. I got some more epoxy in, so I will be doing more soon as the weather gets warmer again! The lighter colors tend to look more dirty/grungy because the Tung Oil finish I use is an amber color and the epoxy itself has a slight hue to it, so darker colors generally look cleaner. The fabric often takes on a different color when it is fully wetted out; some stay pretty true to color, others darken significantly and others go almost translucent! It's pretty fun to play with and experiment!
Regular Micarta has a much smoother feel and look to it, but the home made micarta is a good bit more grippy/fabricy feeling, especially when wet and nasty. I noticed how much it reminded me of nice Ho wood where the fibers stand out a bit when wet! G10 SureTouch is another great handle material for grip, but is rubber and fiberglass layered up, so it has a somewhat squishy feel to it, but it tends to lock the hand in place more. It's harder to make the subtle changes to your grip with SureTouch. Great for Fillet or Hunting knives, but not sure how it would be in the kitchen since the hand doesn't slide/shift as well on it IMHO?
So that brings the question up. What colors do you guys want to see?? Do you want a basic black, brown, tan, denim jean material, red, blue, green, etc? I know black, very light tan wood and reddish wood are the more common colors on production knives. I can also do some really funky colors like the pink and purple ones and the purple, orange and black ones, so the sky is the limit!
The comment about the handle and the blade profile is exactly what I am looking for!
As a home cook only and not spending hours cutting and prepping, I was hoping for this type of feed back. I hate accordion cuts, so I went with a very long flat spot at the heel and not a lot of curve to the edge. I do a lot of veggies at home (cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, onions, mushrooms, rutabaga, turnips, tomatoes and zucchini), so I wanted to combine a nakiri flat spot with a pointy tip area but didn't look like a santoku. I am going to copy my Tanaka Sekiso 240mm and Richmond/Makoto AS Laser edge profile on some of my upcoming blades since those seem to be a more universal profile.
I think I figured out the handle issue. With a Wa handle, they have a bit of a neck with the tang exposed. With a western, you usually have a bolster as your neck or if no bolster, the handle starts pretty much right at the choil. The ones I have done have the wa tang, but western handle, and have a neck to them like I would do on a Wa handle. I think I need to move the front end of the handle up much closer to the choil like is usually found on a western blade. That would bring the handle ergonomics up to meet the blade so you have that connection to the blade in the pinch grip and the handle falls into your hand better. I think that would look better aesthetically, too. I want to tweak the overall shape of the handle a bit more once I get the tang shape figured out for the westerns. I am still going between narrow tang neck and wider tang neck, too. I think narrower would be easier to sneak the western handle up closer to the choil as well.
I don't have callouses from cooking, so the spine and choil is kinda a personal quirk of mine. I even do it on hunting and EDC blades unless they ask for a sharp spine for ferro rod useage. I like them round and soft, like my hands!!
I am glad that you like the overall grind on it! I have been looking for the general use grind for a while that people would like as an all arounder. I know the steel will take and hold a thin fine edge pretty well, but I wanted to leave some heft in the blade. It started out as 3/32" stock, but the convexing narrows the spine down a bit. It seemed to be a good weight, but I prefer using 240mm blades myself or taller 210mm's, which bring a bit more heft to the table.
The steel is Nitro V, which is similar to AEB-L in that the recipe is very "balanced" alloy wise and has very fine grain structure. It doesn't have a very hard carbide percentage, but it is very well dispersed and very fine carbides, which makes sharpening easy. It is supposed to be a little better in edge holding and corrosion resistance than AEB-L, but take a little less fine of an edge and may not be quite as tough as AEB-L. I have used both and have a slight preference for Nitro V after using some blades in the steel for a while. If I want something stainless with max toughness, or finest edge taking, AEB-L gets the nod. For everything else basic stainless, Nitro V gets the nod. AEB-L is likened to a stainless O-1 or 52100 in terms of edge taking, holding, fine grain and toughness, but is stainless. I like Blue and AS steel in Japanese knives as my favorite carbons (R2 in stainless), so I am very pleased that this seems to be on par edge holding to those as well in a pro environment! It's hard to judge the edge holding as a home cook because it doesn't see a lot of useage for extended time periods.
“damn that’s thin" was my thought on the little one as well! LOL. I did a 210mm that was just as thin, but the guy who bought it got it for his brother and I never heard any feedback from either
If you like some heft to your blades, the little one is too light! Its a nice nimble blade for quick cuts, but for me personally, feels too light. I gotta grind out the other 180mm and 210mm of these eventually and will try to keep some meat on them towards the spine or I will use my radius platen to get follow the slight hollow on the blanks. I went with the full grind to remove the KU finish they had from forging/heat treating, but with the hollow, had to remove a lot of meat. The radius platen will allow me to clean up the steel in that hollow without removing as much steel I hope!
Thank you so much for your feedback!!!