Bjorn Bladeworks

I make knives

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

Got my hands on some 2.5" wide 5160 steel to prototype my next chopper

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

My quest to combine 3d printing and knife making continues.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

Bloodwood patu, 276 grams. Sold.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

@KalSpriggs I commonly say "I ain't dead yet."

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

Two patus complete. Taken from the same board of Curupay, they show lots of dark streaks and character on one side while the obverse is mostly clean wood grain. Both weigh in at 250 grams each. Available.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

@japan_nobunaga The United States is a nation of free people, or at least it's supposed to be. The ability of the people to resist by force of arms even their own government is important to maintain that freedom.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

@Lee_Vertisce @johnlovell275 Alas, no. There's another category of people who buy them because they are the cheapest gun they can get. Often armed security people.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

New patu from the new piece of ironwood. 282 grand. Don't drop it in water, it will sink.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

I took a wandering path home from a trip today, and came across a lumberyard I hadn't been to before. "tropical hardwood" the sign said in small letters below the name, I decided to check it out.

After browsing their normal wood selections and conversing about how I intended to use it, I heard the magic words "I think we have some ironwood." after a golf cart ride to the very back corner of the very back building, I came across a very dusty stack of wood boards. Extracting one that was lose, it's heft was undeniable. When I knocked on it and it practically rang like a bell, I knew it was coming home with me.

I have cut a set of scales, and found a dense and intricate grain pattern. I'll have to find out what they look like on a knife.

[Daniel Franke @dfranke]

You buy a German anvil. It contains 83 moving parts and requires winding twice a day. It's forged from excellent steel, holds tolerances across all three striking faces to within three microns, includes a beautifully indexed horn-adjustment mechanism nobody asked for, and requires a proprietary 11-point spanner should you need to replace the rebound calibration bushing. It runs flawlessly for years, but one day it starts up in limp mode because the onboard anvil-management system detects that it's overdue for its 50,000-strike inspection.

You search AliExpress for a Chinese anvil, and are presented with a multitude of offerings from such household-name brands as DUKXJYIBF, HDBTGMXI, AND UEJQIP. They're all priced to within a few pennies of each other, appear completely identical except for the nameplate, and obviously all came out of the same factory. You text your blacksmith friend to ask if they're legit. He tells you he got one like that from KIXJBU a few years ago, and that it's been great and a terrific deal. You thank him, but KIXJBU seems to have folded so you buy the one from UEJQIP. When it arrives, it feels suspiciously light. You scratch it and realize it's iron-plated aluminum.

You buy an American anvil. It's five times the price of the competition, but it comes from a brand that your great-grandfather used to love. It comes boxed with a warranty registration postcard, twenty pages of safety instructions, assay certificate, and a regulatory slip which lists its FCC certification and ITAR registration. It looks just like your friend's KIXJBU. There's a "Made In China" sticker on the bottom.

You buy a Russian anvil. It arrives coated in cosmoline, wrapped in newspaper from 1974, and weighing 40% more than advertised. The finish looks like it was machined with a shovel. The face is not flat, but somehow this does not matter. You drop it off a truck, accidentally leave it outside for six winters, and use it to straighten a bulldozer blade. It's fine.

You buy a Swedish anvil. It comes flat-packed in a long cardboard box with cheerful Neo-Grotesk lettering and a line drawing of a smiling man assembling it with an Allen key. The instructions contain no words, only pictograms showing the anvil face, horn, waist, feet, and 112 identical-looking fasteners. Halfway through assembly, you discover that the pritchel hole was installed upside down, but only because you used peg B17 where you should have used peg B71. Once assembled, it is clean, stable, and works better than it has any right to. You immediately wonder whether you should have bought two.

You buy a Japanese anvil. It arrives wrapped in rice paper inside a paulownia box, accompanied by a certificate bearing three generations of signatures and a photograph of the first production example being presented to the Emperor. The face has been hand-polished by a seventy-eight-year-old master whose family has made striking surfaces since the Muromachi period. You are given detailed instructions for oiling it with a cloth folded in a specific way. It is the most beautiful object you own. You never quite work up the nerve to strike it.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

Kydex sheath

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

5160 steel, trying some new techniques.

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

@okome_source @LShapedAmbush @thelo_fg @Nafe_nasutetsu I generally don't go places where I'm not allowed to carry the tools to defend myself. In Japan I wouldn't even be allowed to carry a knife let alone serious tools.

[Bobby Kuzma @BobbyKuzma]

Announcing @ArtificerHealth — Painless Prior Authorizations.

We're building the infrastructure to make prior auths faster, cleaner, and less painful for everyone in healthcare.

Day one. https://t.co/CRx1eg7f4l

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

Smoking ribs and planning knife. What do you think, should this one be made into steel?

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

Which would you like to see more of?

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

17 inches of malice

[Bjorn Bladeworks @BBladeworks]

@IronlilyS Not as dead as I am