He liked it very much and talked me into making a custom version of that knife so he could use it to hunt wild pigs.
This knife hunting is a practise in which you use 4-5 big dogs (Dogo Argentino usually) to run and grab the wild pig on place and then the hunter stabs it to death while tring not to get injured by the animal.
As you can see on the next picture, the original model was about 1 1/2" shorter and with a higher point than the actual knife I've made. This is because I thought the blade was too short for the intended use and the point wasn't going to get aligned with the arm movement for a clean wound.
Since I've made the point thinner for better penetration, I've changed the bevelings and made it a mix between a flat and a convex grind, making it more robust, while having a sharp edge.
My client liked it very much and he's been sucesfully using it since then to kill wild pigs on his hunting trips (I'll try to see if I can get him to send me some pictures of those killed pigs)
Since the hunter stabs the pig's heart with a movemet of the arm from the resting position to a higher one, the curve of the blade makes it more adecuate for this task than a straigth knife.
Now, some months ago, another client asked me to make him a knife like it, but in san mai damascus with a mokume guard, so I asked Ariel to make me those so I could start working on the knife.
This are two san mai pieces, the smaller one was the one for this knife.
If you check out the close up pic, it developed light rust, and you can see the damascus patterns depending on how the different steels reacted to the oxigen.
(Don’t mind the sign, it’s a joke for Ariel)
After some work, I got the blade ground and tempered.
A little filework
The piece of mokume for the guard (iron, steel and copper)
Almost finished guard.
Etched blade.
With the guard presented on place.
Other side.
I hope you like it, as of now I'm trying to get the sheep horn flat for the handle slabs.
Thanks for looking!
Ruben
Please share pictures when the second knife is complete!
