Sheep Skinner

My friend Derrick has been working with knives and airguns for some time.  He has become quite expert at building, repairing and refinishing these big boy toys.  Frankly, more and more women are admitting to an interest in knives and what's not to love about a gun you can safely shoot in your basement all winter long.  This is an email he sent me and I got his permission to publish it on my blog.  I really enjoy his work and I wanted to share it with you.  

I'm having a little trouble with most of the images, but life is an adventure so here goes!!!

I've had this Russell sheep skinner blade for almost a year and finally found both the time and the inclination to move forward.  

Got it from Jantz Supply.  I liked the shape and found it vaguely reminiscent of the Grohmann pattern Canadian knives.   It's not like I want to skin a sheep.   As it comes, there's no actual point.  It's rounded and the point is completely unsharpened.  The rest of the blade was honed to shave.  I'm not sure how to describe the polish on the blade.  Crocus cloth maybe?  Kinda wavy.  I like it.  It's a high carbon steel.  Probably 1095.  After re-drilling a handle pin hole and filing 10 thumb notches in the back of the blade, it's gotta be in the upper 50's on the Rockwell hardness scale.  I reshaped the blade to create a point and slimmed down the handle.  Reshaping the handle resulted in the rear pin hole being off the centerline.  The new hole location was going to overlap the existing hole slightly, so I filled the hole with a tiny stub of steel rod, staked it in place, then ground it flush.  Spot annealed with a torch for the new hole and through drilled.

Since I still had some green canvas micarta from the Gerber project, I elected to just use it up.  If Woodcraft was closer...  Some areas of the tang still need some final polishing to remove all the tool marks.  Filing the thumb notches was a bitch.  I didn't bother to measure or mark them--just did it by eye with a needle file.  A diamond needle file would've been a luxury.  So, now it'll need a sheath.  I think the kydex is a no go this time around and I'd like to try to make a leather sheath.  Try to scrounge up some 8 oz. saddle leather locally.  Pat Catan's maybe?  Here's the pics of the knife.  I figure it's 90--95% finished.