Couple of New Damascus Pieces

Here are a couple of pics of the last couple pieces I've managed to finish up. One is a tiny plankton sized ladder damascus Pacu. I made it for someone, and really like how it's small, damascus, and entirely functional:)

The other piece is a Vines and Roses Prymate (Jake, you must be psychic). I've been trying to scale most of the tools down to 2.5", which is the length of this piece:)

New Tool Design: Prymate?

I wanted to get up a few quick shots of a new tool I've been playing with. I've just made the one so far, and here it is next to the Reptilian Hammerhead I kept for myself. It's a basic design, and I think it would be easy to modify, as well as serve as a good platform for ports, mosaics, glowdots and such. Not sure what to call them, and I've just been referring to them as Prymates.

Click on the pics for a high resolution shot:)

DotMatrix Pacu and Raindrop Betta

Camera's acting crazy again, and the colors are coming up screwy. Here are the latest two damascus pieces: one Raindrop Betta, and one DotMatrix Pacu. Both of these turned out pretty nice.

I have two patterns of damascus that when finished, I'm not happy with. The Fireball and Sharkstooth pattern stock I have both appear to have impurities in parts of the bar or something in one of the steel layers. Although handled and finished exactly the same way, they just don't produce the smoothness and visual appeal of the other patterns (which is a shame, because they are really neat). With this batch, I also finished up a Fireball Betta, that exhibits the problem. Structurally, I'm sure it's fine, but because of its appearance, I can't sell it as "first" quality. I'll likely either sell these pieces at a heavily discounted price (as seconds), or I'll give them as bonuses for certain orders. For anyone taking both pieces above, I'll include the Fireball Betta for free to serve as "user". I'll also try to start listing these pieces in the "Seconds" section of the website, so keep an eye out:)

Tool ID Cards

I've always like how Peter Atwood, CRK, and others include an ID/"Born on" card with their knives and tools, and today I finally managed to order a few hundred to try out. I ended up with 3 colors (100 of each), and will be including one of them with each tool/knife in the future. This is just the first batch; I'll try to get the lynx logo on the next set:)

I should have pics of a few new damascus pieces tomorrow.

A Few Unique Titanium Pieces

left: ported Baby Pacu with a single 1/8" mosaic pin
center: ported Betta with a glow-dot and single 1/8" mosaic pin
right: the first Baby Pacu I made with the new titanium stock. It was the experimental piece I made that I also attempted to heat color numerous times with varied degrees of success (or failure, depending on how you look at it) ;)
On the ported pieces, on one of the ports on each piece, I had a little trouble with the drill bit. If you look very closely, you may be able to see that one of the holes on each piece isn't perfectly rounded.

Thick Titanium's Here!

Top photo:

Sharkstooth damascus Thumbnail

Long Baby Pacu. The first piece I made to try out the new titanium shipment. I also practiced heat coloring with a torch. At first, I got an amazing contrast of colors, but got "greedy" and tried to control the patterning to get the tiger striping effect so many others are able to get. I've heard that beadblasting the finish before hand helps. Anyway, I tried numerous other times, before just giving up and letting it be light blue (for the most part).

Middle photo:

An ultralean titanium Hammerhead. The stock was not quite wide enough to allow for a regular sized Hammerhead, but I wanted to see what I could do anyway. This one will remain a one of a kind piece, as I'll probably get wider material before making more of the Hammerheads.

A large Thumbnail type piece that is thicker and longer than most other pieces. It also has nicely radiused edges down the sides:)

Bottom photo:

An example of the three tools I'll be making from the .190" thick barstock shipment.

Baby Pacu, Betta, and Minnows

Latest Damascus Group

These all turned out really nice, and a couple are already spoken for:)

Top

left: One of a kind piece I made from the end of a bar of Ladder Twist that has an interesting pattern.

center: Spirograph Pryrranha

right: Vines and Roses Pacu

Bottom

left: lightly etched high contrast Basketweave Pacu (as opposed to the deeper etched antique finish) made for someone by request

center: Ladder Twist Pacu (looks like exotic tiger striping or something similar)

right: Ladder Pacu

All pieces are made from Devin Thomas's stainless damascus.

I'll try to get the pieces that are available up on the website sometime this afternoon or evening.

Clicking on the pictures should reveal a large detailed version of the photos:)

Another Small Batch

top picture:

left: "Moonscape" hammerdinged surface on a Pryrranha made from D.Thomas Dot Matrix stainless damascus

middle: Raindrop Pacu

right: Fireball Pacu

Both the Moonscape DM Pryrranha, and the Raindrop Pacu are both sold, but I should be listing the Fireball Pacu on the site this evening, along with the MegaMosaicMoai (though I forgot to get a smaller picture of it).

bottom picture:

Titanium Moai with 15 1/8" mosaic pins. 3 types of pins, 5 of each type. The previous record for pins I've put in a piece (that I can remember anyway) is 7:)