BlackRabbit Logo

I know this blog is called Obsidian Rabbit but truth be told, when I started thinking of trading names for my knifemaking the first thing that came to mind was BlackRabbit. Sadly that name is already being used for another blog, which serves another purpose - but that doesn't mean I can't still use the name for my knifemaking.
So now I have a logo.

Scandi Knife

I have a thing for Scandi (Scandinavian) blades, which I think is strengthened by the fact that we don't seem to have a lot of these available in Australia - I've never seen a commercially made one in a store, and from what I've seen (apologies if I'm wrong) Aussie knifemakers move more towards producing bush knives.
I think the styling of a scandi knife is amazing though. The handles are made for comfort and I can't get past how good a Scandi grind looks.
So here is my attempt at a Scandi blade, though I haven't yet put on the final grind - I'll get around to that later.
Handle materials are made of stainless steel, stag antler, fibre spacers and the wood is gidgee.

Bushknife Sheath

It took a long time to work out how I was going to make a sheath for this knife. The blade is such a strange shape to begin with and every time I started drawing up a sketch of what I thought would be able to hold the knife I ended up with something that looked like an oblong gone horribly wrong.
But then decided to cut out the nasty oblong shape and then round off all of the corners slightly, and glue it before doing anything else - then inserted the knife and wet formed the leather.
After the wet form it started to make a bit more sense and I'm now confident that I went the right way.
The belt loop is a bit odd as I originally intended to have the loop drop behind the sheath but then realized after cutting the leather that this would leave the handle dangling loosely out the top of the sheath. Being one inclined to not start again from scratch I incorporated a larger piece of leather, cut a few holes in it and fed the original, unstitched loop through it. Pretty happy with the results.

Sheath for Dad's Knife

I've eventually managed to get around to dropping into the leather supplier and buying some veg tanned stock, and as I promised my father a long, long time ago, the very first thing I made would be a sheath for knife I made him last year.
I told him I was thinking about incorporating a holder for his firesteel and then when I actually started cutting up, punching holes, gluing, sewing and wet forming the leather I somehow managed to completely forget this idea. So I ended up making a neck sheath just for the firesteel and to be honest, I think this actually looks better than having it on the knife sheath.

Utility Knife Step-by-step: Part 2

I got so caught up in the moment of shaping the handle that I completely overlooked taking any photos of the process.
In a nutshell though, I shaped the handle using the bench grinder. I actually started with the stone wheel which might sound strange for use on wood but it does wonders with removing large quantities at once. I then shaped further using the belt grinder and drum sander.
After shaping the handle I finished sanding the blade with wet and dry, going from 80 grit through to 800.
Then I sanded the handle to 240 grit and finished off with an 800 grit sanding pad. This was followed by several applications of danish oil with a light sand in between coats.
And for the final touch I ran the flade over a clean sisal wheel.

The results are as follows:





The filework shows up really well with the black epoxy.


There are some bits I could have done better but overall I'm rather happy with how things turned out