Weekend activities

Pike's Peak from Northwest.


Burned area from 2002 forest fire.





Couple of nice rainbows.

Copa Mundial

I won't bore you with my analysis of World Cup 2010 except to say GO USA!!

I love soccer for a lot of reasons but while kicking the ball around with Mason the other day I realized that soccer is really awesome because you can eat while playing it.

Life has come full circle

At around age 14 or 15 I remember spending a good half day thinking about how to use all the tools in the garage to make a knife. I spent the second half of the day doing something else and life went on. Nearly two decades later I have learned to appreciate a nice knife and finally got around to making one of my own. I can cross it off my bucket list.

For my first knife I was swinging for the fences but I think I pulled it off. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Now that I know I can pull off the big one I've got some smaller ones ready to go.

3/16" 1095 carbon steel
~17" overall length
heat treated to 57 RC
White denim Mycarta w/ red liners
Brass pins and lanyard tube.
Hand finished blade and handle to 400 grit.

Since I'm hours from good fishing......

I'm still trying to make knives.

My humble shop. Yeah, it's a mess. I started cleaning it out and didn't finish.





My knives. The top two are back from heat treat. The top one is 3/16" 1095 carbon steel @ 57 RC and the second is 1/8" 1095 @ 60 RC. I cleaned them up a little and put a quick edge on them to see how they cut/chop. I'm pretty happy with them. I need to get them handled.

The bottom four are new ones I ground while waiting for the first two to come back. They are all around 4" blades from 1/8" O1 carbon steel. The third one down is a Kephart style blade, the fourth just a nice drop point, the fifth a spear point and the last I made to be more of a skinner. I need to do a little more sanding and the O1 blades will be ready for heat treat also.


At this point I plan on making the handles with homemade ivory denim or linen micarta with red liners and either brass or nickel silver pins and lanyard tubes. I made these slabs for the big chopper out a pair of white denim jeans I got at a thrift store. I'm making some more for the other knives out of my old church shirts.

SHOT Show

I fulfilled the birthday wish I've had for the last five years or so. I got to attend SHOT Show; the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Tradeshow in Las Vegas. It's the biggest tradeshow of the year for anything dealing with cool outdoor stuff. In my case it's ground zero for Big D's Trifecta: guns, knives and flashlights. It was awesome. I was in shock and awe. I carried my camera around for 5 hours and had so much fun handling all the new products that I didn't take a single picture. Not one.

Coolest souvenir of the day? GLOCK playing cards!

Best Meal? In-n-Out!

Best Knife of the day? RAT Junglas Machete!

Best gun of the day? Rifle Dynamics MAC-11 SBR w/ Bulgarian side folder or Arsenal Krink.....but how do you pick from so many? LWRC REPR....or M6A2...and on and on...

Best Flashlight of the day? Surefire UB3T or M3LT. INSANE.

I'm also tryind my hand at knifemaking. I've got a couple ready to send out for heat treat.


I'm going to try handling them with homemade denim micarta.

Holiday Pondering

God created the Earth and on the 7th day he rested, but on the 8th day He made guacamole: and it was so, and He saw that it was good.

The 9th day was flyfishing. Just sayin'.

There's a first time for everything

I channeled my inner Chevy Chase.





Incidentally, we started a new family tradition called "Christmas Hammer". Can you find it?