Knives and cattle

Some knives I finished yesterday. Three are one owner, mesquite/stainless handle, 5160/8670/15n20 damascus steel blade. The fourth is a left over piece from the billet with black locust burl on the handle. I will put it up for sale.

These have a 2 1/2" cutting edge, and a 3 1/2" handle. Just right for an every day carry.

Random stuff from around the ranch.

Two feet

Branding

The cut

Spurs, and a castrating knife I made

New camera

But first the important stuff. My niece won the big buck of the family this year. She went out by her self, sat patiently, and was rewarded with this

A 12 point is hard to beat any year.

I received a new camera for Christmas. I think Kim is tired of me bugging her for her camera. She probably thinks I'm going to drop it or something.
 I got a Nikon 1, if that means anything to anyone. So far it seems simple, takes a good picture, and they are easy to download. I still need to learn a lot about editing, but I will get there if my patience allows.
These are some I took today trying to figure things out.

They are better than my cell phone any way. I will finish these spurs in a day or two, and post the finished product.
Helpful hints on editing, resizing, etc would be appreciated.

new spurs

These are going to a young lady that just married into the ranch. We can't have her riding around on that feed store stuff. They are one piece spurs, 3/4 inch band, and an 1 1/4 inch, 8 point rowel.

I got this one back from armoralleather and delivered it to the new owner today. It will mark and cut a lot of calves, and skin a lot of deer. An easy life it won't lead.

Snow

I got a late start this morning. It snowed last night, and the electricity was out, so I missed my 4 am to 7 am shift in the shop. Feeding took a while. Everything slows down with just a little bit of inclement weather. I don't think I could survive any further north.
  Things did go well this afternoon, and I managed to finish these.

I took these pictures this morning while feeding.

I'm already ready for summer time again, I can deal with 100 degrees alot better than I can 10.

Action shot

A set of my spurs in action. I think this was taken in Reno this year. They are a pretty good excuse to follow the finals.

I finished these several days ago, but the weather has not been right for picture taking. We finally took the best of all the bad ones, and posted these two. I hope they win lots of barrel races.
 These have a 3/4" band, and an 1 1/4" shank. One inch rowel.

I am whittling on Christmas. I got a set of spurs that was silver-less in a previous post to the new owner's husband last week, these are gone, and I got silver stuck on a set today, they just need polishing and
engraving. I still have a lot to do, and the clock is ticking. Can't believe I quit at 3:30 today.

Finishing

I have gotten a lot done the last day or two. I start out finishing on my spurs with a 40 grit belt, then get progressively finer, to a minimum of 400 grit. I will run some on to 800 grit if they are wall hangers. One thing I've learned is belts are cheap. Keeping a sharp belt cuts my time in half and does a lot better job. I'm kinda in production mode until Christmas, and use every time saver I can find.

Cutting the rowel slot. I cut it close with the band saw, then clean it up on the belt grinder.
I'm missing some minor steps in all of this, sometimes because I get busy and forget to take pictures, and sometimes because it's boring. Maybe I should hire a biographer, at least he could document the cuss words that it takes to make a set of spurs.

This set is almost ready for silver.


I road to the sale barn this morning with a neighbor. Lots of rough, thin cattle. You could tell that the hard to catch ones are finally getting caught. Lots of cattle that have never been out of the brush, much less in a pen and took care of. Every body is out of grass and water, and hay is to expensive. So goes a drought. Look out, it's going to last another summer, and there will be lots of broke cowboys by next fall.

splitting heel bands

These two sets are 1018/nickel damascus. I forged, cleaned up, and sized the billets, and band saw cut to fairly close to final shape. I leave the bottom part of the shank uncut to give me a little more friction in the vice and give me something to grind off after I beat it into the spur shape.

Both of these spurs are ladies size, and this is my ladies size jig.

Heating to bend my bands. I like to use a rosebud tip and oxygen/acetylene on the damascus spurs, I can concentrate my heat where I want it, and I seem to get a lot less failures in my damascus. There is nothing worse than getting this far, only to have the spur pull apart at the welds.

Two sets roughed out. Now on to finishing.

Deer season

But first, important stuff like spurs. Made from farriers rasps, old silver quarters for conchos.

Deer season starts in the morning. Traffic on our dirt roads has been dangerous for the past 2 days, lots more silver cans in the ditch, make sure the dogs stay home, count cattle sunday and monday and check for bullet wounds, direct lost hunters to the road they missed a mile back, and answer the question,"what do ya'll do out here".
 It's really not that bad( except for the traffic, slow down, it ain't the interstate). Cross Plains put on a big hunters feed tomorrow at noon, and my chamber of commerce bigwig daughter has set me up a booth to sell my knives from. 11 am - 3 pm, how bad could it be? She also informed me that I am now a member of the COC, even though I actually live and work in the  big city of Admiral. I will put my foot down when she tries to make me attend one of those meetings.
 http://www.jsartandsoul.com/, http://www.photojkc.com are her businesses. Take a look, she's pretty talented.

Rodeo spurs

I get to build rough stock spurs once in a while. I don't consider it a specialty or anything, I think I'm just a maker who listens and builds exactly what they want.
 The top is a set of 1 piece bareback spurs that will be at the NFR in December. I will bet he has the only one piece spurs there. 10 points to anyone that can name him!
 The next will be at the NFR in a couple of years. These are welded. I'm not sure I can forge these and keep a clean line and straight shank on these skewed ones.

A cold front is blowing through. Might be a good day to hang around the forge tomorrow. I have a lot to forge, spurs, buckles, and knives, all on the Christmas list. It's coming fast.

Awards banquet

I attended an awards banquet for the Turkey Creek Rodeo Club play day series last night. I went mainly for the bar-b-que, and because Neva shamed me into it, and got called upon to present the buckles to the all-around champions of each age group. I did make the buckles, and it was worth all the effort just to see these hard working kiddo's get their year end prizes. These kids are the future, and I think the future looks just fine.

These are some spurs I made this summer for Josh Gibson, horse trainer and ranch rodeo contestant extraordinaire. These are one piece spurs, one inch band, and a two inch heart shank.

finished billet

First, some spurs I finished Sunday

1 piece, 1 1/4" band, 2" shank, 2" 20 point rowel. These went to a pre-conditioning yard in Roscoe, Tx, where they will see a lot of use.

This is a surface grinder attachment for my Wuertz grinder.http://www.twuertz.com/Home_Page.php It has cut my damascus making time in half.( no more hand grinder for this old man) I am a one man show and need all the help I can get.

2 billets, ready to start knives.

Random

A cold front blew through today, dry for the most part, as usual. Temperature did not get over 75, it felt so good I pounded out damascus all afternoon.
I changed my picture to a set of spurs I made for some republican ladies to present to our esteemed lt. governor, Mr. David Dewhurst. I understand he is into cutting horses, maybe he uses them some.

Either way, I'll bet he is the only lt. governor in the U.S. with a set of damascus spurs.

Some cowboy jewelry, made from a mexican coin.

A set of rasp spurs I made for Jarred Smith, bareback rider extraordinaire.

These snakes are left over pieces of spurs. waste not, want not.

IGBSM Spurs

We had our annual  http://www.igbsm.org/ meeting this week end, and I took these to show off. The igbsm is a bit and spur makers guild that I am a member of. I got to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time, and got to meet some people that I have only known through forums or reputations. I had lots of fun and learned a lot. The guild is doing a lot of hard work promoting this art form, and I look forward to a lot more years with the guild.
 These spurs are 1018/nickel damascus, 1 inch heel band, and a 1.5 inch roper shank. The buckles and rowels are also damascus. James Jaggars, of Putnam Texas made the straps.