Pinfeather, CPM154 Steel at 1/8" Thickness, Walnut Scales

I've got an understanding with wood, and as it turns out it's exactly the same one Victor Tugelbend's got with it as well: I won't touch it, and it won't split.



Even so, I had some pieces of nice stabilized walnut left over and I wound up casting about for something to do with them, as you do. I settled on making a pun, and here we are. I named this "Pinfeather," and its handles are pinned to the tang with brass. Geddit?

The Pinfeather is sort of a hybrid between a hunter and a paring knife. It's not very large, only 6-1/16" long overall with a 2-3/4" blade. The wooden handles are svelte and hand contoured. Hand made, of course, because I haven't got the equipment to make any other choice. Making them svelte required splitting one of my pieces of walnut in half, lengthwise. I did this freehand with a coping saw and this process was exactly as arduous as you think. I am not a woodworker; At the outset I had no plans to be a woodworker, but I can already see how this kind of thing is going to go. There's no sense in not being multitalented. Knife making by its very nature seems to reach out and wrap its tentacles around several other disciplines as a matter of course. So, note to self: Buy a small bandsaw for later.

I ended up taking a couple of nicks and splinters out of it, which I backfilled with epoxy because I'll be darned if I'm dismounting these and throwing away two still mostly serviceable pieces of wood. I'm told this sort of thing adds charm to a piece, but next time I think I'll endeavor to do a better job.

Even so, there's just something about a nice piece of wood. Once its finished with the libation of your choice, in this case a couple of coats of tung oil, the luster and natural glow it seems to take on is inherently appealing.

The Pinfeather is unique among my entire lineup so far because I utterly winged it. I did no design work whatsoever, and in a way that's kind of liberating. But it's also kind of nerve-wracking as well, like stepping off of the bridge without quite having the secure knowledge that your bungee cord is, in fact, attached. When you're making it up as you go along you don't really have any concrete proof of what the final result is going to look like.

But I like it. And I have an intended home for it, and I think its new owner will like it, too.



Do you have an idea for your own custom knife? By all means, don't let any of the above get in the way of my crass commercialism. Drop me a line and we'll see about making your design a reality.