Halloween....My favorite holiday

Halloween is here again........So Im changing it up. Usually I wait until the day of to brainstorm a costume and create geekish art. This year however Im planning ahead, Im creating..................A pirate!

So clearly I cant settle for store bought, I have to make it complicated...So here it is so far after 100 bucks in steel and another 100 in leather were making Halloween history...enjoy, I mean AARRRRRRRRR!

SUPPORT THE WAR EFFORT.....GIVE US YOUR OLD TIRES

During the height of WW2 the U.S. Government asked the people of the country to purchase war bonds and more famously.......donate tires. Now I asked myself (once again) why tires. Then as you all know Halloween comes around and I get this wild urge to cut stuff apart and build CRAZY in my shop. So with a bit of titanium (toss away off an Apache helicopter)and convincing a local tire changing establishment that my cause was great they donated some old race tires to my new found war of zombie domination and costume supremessy. Hence forth once again the question of,, Why tires? was answered. check it out.

Leather.......just like skin but less painful to decorate!

So, we finally sprung for a set of leather tooling essentials and started to play. figured my first experiment with tooling leather would be focused on one of my great redneck past times.......GUNS. so here it is, I decided to make a holster for my .38 snub nose(brand new Taurus I pulled in off a trade). So I began by cutting the holster patter out of heavy veggie tanned saddle leather and before sewing the pieces togather proceeded to "doodle" on the front face. And vouala, first project down and well looks pretty ok to me.....

GIDDY UP!

So look at my new hobby, Its called cowboy action shooting! Its a bunch of grown men, women and entire families that get together dressed up like they're starring in the latest box office western flick. Everyone brings there own grip of pistols, rifle and shotgun along with a horse-butt load of ammunition. It literally 100s of normal folk gathered once or more per month with enough fire power to overthrow Africa... and its all for fun!
Its surely something your average football watching DUDE would call dorky at best. Lets think about it for a moment...guns, knives, cowboys & characters and women in 1800's prostitute outfits, or a couch, big screen TV, and grown men that couldn't play football past high school slapping ass cheering other grown men handling there ball's pretending to own a team of fantasy players.
Looking at it that way fantasy football seems a little, I don't know "GAY"
Well any way this photo is to show you the Winchester model 1897 pump action 12 gauge shotgun we found for about $300.
when we found it it was in only fair condition, with a full length barrel, no butt plate and no original finish left on the metal parts.
COUPLE OF CHEAP BEERS LATER...I had sanded and refinished all the furniture with linseed oil (same as used in the 1800s), cleaned and re-blued all metal parts, cut the barrel down too 18.5", and made a custom 2/layer leather butt pad and grip all held in place with bronze dome head furniture nails. Well after that we now own a sawed off shotgun that can put 7 round of buckshot down range in about 2 seconds or less (no safety on this model so you can hold the trigger and rack the slide, "slap shot")
So if your hobby IS fantasy football and your slightly offended, well too bad you have a football and TV remote I have a shotgun....LATER

HONK IF YOU THINK NINJAS ARE BAD ASS!

Have you ever thought about ninjas...Ya know the old school special forces guys from japan. Well I do quite often (seeing as i am one) and what would the modern bad ass need in a sword.
I figured for one it would have to be lite, fairly compact and most of all durable. Than I looked at swords big and small from the past and left behind what we don't need today, and combined the thing we would need. In the end I came up with this, lite weight, multi functional, short sword for the modern soldier. A blade that could be carried into a modern day battle or assist in a survival situation.

So have a look and enjoy the drooling all you would be modern ninjas, and don't forget to HONK!

The hell with the dog, This is all about a boy and his knives

As you already know or if your new, are sure to find out I am a knife nut. Yes, yes its true I like making knives, now I'm not by any means a "master blade smith" and most of my knives will never see the pages of a premier knife magazine. However I believe you could say i make common sense knives. Ya know knives that cut stuff, and usually pretty well. I'm not that guy that carries a knife because it looks cool, I carry it as a tool.. a most handy tool that serves many functions from carving on a stick (commonly known as "whittlin" in some southern circles) to self defense.
 Some that know me may even agree that I become overly critical when it comes to some of the more "Useless pieces of manufactured crap" available every where from the Internet to the corner market down the road. Nobody seems to take pride in the knife in their pocket or on there belt anymore, Long gone are the days of daddy passing down that prized old timer jack knife to his son, you know the one his father gave him. so here it is, a small tribute to the beautiful in function not fashion, here's to the worlds oldest weapon and tool still in use today...

days gone by

Well I've decided for lack of pictures and too many projects I would expand this blog to include  more of my "shed born works". what better way to start than with the past...you know just like a bad episode of friends...

Lets start here. one of the few knives i ever made that came out truly pretty. Nothing but an old Nicholson file, some micarta(laminated cloth in many layers) and as always a few beers,

Here's a couple of old friends...the big boys some are still with me and some with family...You know who you are, say hi for me.(Mom)

Hasn't been all knives either, I'm sure the family remembers Christmas and all the friends remember Halloween...Mad max eat your heart out. Well for now that's a post. More to come.