Olive knife, or don't get cocky with wood

I've done a few knives now, I think more than a dozen. I've worked with paduak, walnut, oak, ash, and a few others. When my friend Mark showed me a piece of olive wood in a bargain bin at the local Woodcrafter I went for it. I then proceeded to become that wood's b!@#$.

Olive has beautiful grain, a lovely warm color, amazing feel when polished up and amazing smell. It is gorgeous. It works by hand pretty well, and I now know why all the sources I have since found for it are in the turning sections of wood stores and online catalogs. That beautiful grain makes cutting the stuff into scales for a scale tang knife interesting. I had a customer who wanted a knife with an Italian feel. My wife suggested I use the Olive, and I thought perfect! This is what happened four times, including after I had it scaled and polished up ready to go out for a deadline.


As you can see the wood cracked. A lot. It split on the grain very easily. After much swearing, running out to buy another block of wood, and throwing one of the broken scales violently in my garage (its the one NOT pictured), I got it to work. By cutting the scales thicker than I normally would and trimming down after they had been mounted I was able to get a clean and stable piece on the knife. After sanding and polishing this stuff looks gorgeous. Mark was right, it cleans up brilliantly. The grain stands out and it is warm and soft to the touch.

Here's the final product:

With flash-


and without -


Sheath is black veg tan and is going out the door tomorrow, in time for the customer's needs.

It's Been a While

It's been quite some time, but I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. School and work do a number on free time unfortunately, but I'm itching to get another couple projects off the ground. I figured in lieu of some grandiose research thing, I'd break down what I've been up to lately.

I'm well on my way to producing several pairs of cut cloth stockings/hose in wool; one pair blue, one yellow, and one gray (which will be overdyed with dark green or black to produce a "poor black"). A brief overview of their use was detailed in one of my previous posts. The goal is to fully phase out the knit stockings I have, as the kind that I had been wearing, though wool, aren't quite correct for the late 16th century. Some kinds of knit wool stockings were probably worn, but they were dissimilar to what's available at a reasonable price (let alone on a college student's budget!) I wore the cotton stockings that are favored by the reenactment community for several years before I saw the light and shifted to wool. Now I'm at the next step. We all have to start somewhere and the trick is to continue learning, improving, and moving on rather than just sit at "good enough" or fall into the thinking of the "ten foot rule" or worse when working with the public.

Also on the list is making a new doublet, but I can't quite decide what to make. It'll definitely be "early period" for Elizabethan (1560's-mid-1570's), but the material is the big choice now. I can do a dark brown worsted wool, a white linen canvas, or an unbleached linen canvas. I love the undeyed white wool one I wear now, but it's approaching the end of its days... I work with armor a lot and I'm afraid of destroying a nice white linen doublet with rust and grease right away. We'll see.

Last month I began building a six board chest (with a lot of help) in the style of the late 16th-early 17th century. My woodworking skills are...bad...to put it lightly, so things will go slow and sloppily for some time, but I'm very excited to finally have an awesome box to lug around all my junk in. It should be done by the summer.

I've also been commissioned to sew a 16th century Italian suit for a good friend of mine. I'm thinking a black worsted wool doublet guarded and trimmed with black velvet to achieve the textural contrast often seen in portraiture, with slashed/pinked black wool breeches. I'd like to line the doublet with some good Italian fustian, face the collar and possibly other smaller areas with some white silk satin I've got, and use hand-worked black linen thread buttons. I think that if it turns out the way I'm picturing it, it'll give off a sort of an rakish feel to it- perfect for the sort of man he portrays.

Lastly, I've been trying to brainstorm a topic for in-depth research. Last year I looked into the myth of detachable sleeves in doublets in 16th century Western Europe and the uniforms of the trained bands (militia) of the city of Bristol at the time of the Queen's visit in 1574. I'm at a loss. I have a small project going about the truth behind "lace-up" men's body garments from the same time period, but I want something epic. If you have any ideas or suggestions for topics, let me know!

Anyways, I'm off for now. What sort of projects do you have lined up? If you need sources for anything, I'm sitting on a mountain of them, so post up here if you need some help finding information to get you going.

Best,

-Dan