I get my knife handle material at TJ Maxx

Cutting boards? More like knife handles if you ask me.

Found these two cutting boards at TJ Max while doing some Christmas shopping. They are about 5/8" thick and fairly flat. Both are different cuts of olive wood.

Sweet burl, man.

Check out this shit. I love it.

Nice figuring, dude.

And all for the low, low price of $19.99.

Gyuto blade - 15N20 steel with hamon

I ground this blade out from some 15N20 stock. Prior to heat treat I applied some refractory cement to act as clay for a differential heat treatment resulting in a genuine hamon.

I've done this before with 15N20 steel many times with good results, the only issue is that the hamon tends to be a little faint due to the added 2% nickel in the steel alloy. If you look closely you can see a faint line following the belly of the blade right in the middle or so.

Micarta bolsters were peened on and the olivewood blocks were cut from the cutting board and drilled prior to applying the epoxy.

Blocky at the moment

Here it is all glued up and ready to cure! There's always a lot of meat that ends up getting ground off but hey, the wood was cheap!

I used mosaic glow in the dark pins because they're awesome.

Finished blade

Damn, that is some nice wood.

Olivewood handle shot #1

Olivewood handle shot #2

Mosaic glow pins

I make and use my own glow in the dark mosaic pin stock for most of my blades now and I'm loving it :D