Knife #7

I made this knife for my dad. I really wanted it to be one of a kind so I went all out. He wanted a smaller, general purpose blade so I went with a drop point hunter style. He goes by "T" most of the time, thus the T's on the blade and sheath. The blade is 154 cm stainless, which I took to a new level of hand polishing. The handle scales are curly maple, and the guard and corbys are brass. The firesteel I also re-handled in curly maple and brass. I used curly maple because my dad makes mandolins and the scales are made of scraps from one of his projects. The file pattern is an original design by me. I have seen plenty of negative rope patterns but never a positive. It took a very long time to finish but it was worth it. the pattern is continuous from the point of the blade all the way around the spine to the finger groove. On the guard I incorporated a bottle opener which works great! He assured me that it does not aggravate his finger while using the knife. The sheath is a cross draw, and hangs perfectly on the belt. I again made the stamps for the leather tooling, and decided to incorporate tassels to give it an old mountain man look. I gave the knife to him at our cabin above Silverton, and he had "to keep looking at it, cause I cant believe it is real!" He took the knife and hacked a branch off a downed tree and whittled a marshmallow stick. Then promptly cleaned off the sap!
This new set of photos shows the grain in the curly maple better.