Knife from Sfreddo Bladesmithing School

Recently I spent 10 days taking lessons from Rodrigo Sfreddo, at his workshop and bladesmithing school, in Nova Petrópolis - RS(http://www.rodrigosfreddo.com/index.php?idioma=2). Sfreddo certainly is one of the best knifemakers in Brazil and his work has internetional relevance. During the course we developed a hunter knife taking special care to every step, from the forging process to fitting and finishing.

Besides all the tips he could give us, we took home a piece with quite high quality level to use as benchmark for future works. The knife has aprox. 11" long, the blade as forged from O1 steel, guard and pins are made of stainless steel and the handle is imbuia burl.

Stock Removal Skinning

This is an experience on stock removal. A small skinning knife (6 1/4 or ~16cm long), made from a 1/4" flat bar of 5160 steel. The bouster and the pommel are stainless steel (316). The handle is made from Buckeye Burl scales.

Sandero Style

This is a new hunter knife that I produced following this popular shape called Sandero. In fact It is mainly characterized by the handle shape, developed and named by the famous american knifemaker Jerry Fisk.
The wood is the same I´ve been using and I´m still having trouble to finish it and make it clear and glossy.
The blade was forged from a flat spring, the guard and pin are made of stainless steel. It has 9" overall length .

First damascus knife

These are some photos of my very first attempt to produce damascus steel blades. In fact, I´ve tryed it before but this is the first finished knife. It was began with 14 layers, 7 of 15N20 (rich nickel steel) and old files (1095, I gess). 15N20 produces the light stripes while the 1095 becomes dark after eaching. The billet was streched and folded 3 times (that was all my arms could handle) resulting in aproximatly 105 layer. After that I forged a full tang Integral knife and made some slots all over the blade area using a grinding disc to "enrich" the damascus pattern. By the end, I still got some delamination. They revealed during the forging process.

This is the original billet.

During the folding process, the photos were taken by a cel phone.

The result.

New hunter

This is a new hunter knife I’ve just finished. Forged from a flat spring, it is a small knife, 8"(~200mm) length overall. The guard, pins and pommel were made from stainless steel. The handle was made from Amarelinho (Helietta longifoliata Britt., Rutaceae). It is a light yellow colored wood but the use of a wrong polishing compound introduced these dark grains.

Bowie Knife

This is an 11 1/2" (~300mm) long bowie knife I made recently. It is my first attempt on this style so I tried to make it very simple. It was forged from a 1/4 thick flat spring (guess 5160), the guard is made of stainless steel (304) and the handle is Imbúia.

The sheath is from dyed leather and the texture was produced by a basket weave leather stamp I made for this project.

I also took a picture of the pieces before the assembly.

Hunter Knife

This is a drop point hunter knife with about 9"(225mm) length made from a flat spring (i guess 5160 steel). It is a hidden tang and the handle was made from a block of brown micarta(celeron) that, after grinded, revealed this dark grains. The guard and pin are made from stainless steel 304.
The western style sheath is from dyed leather sewed by hand.