Rustic Cholla Dagger

[P. McKinley]

Rustic Cholla Dagger

Blade: 7" of old harrow rake from our farm, etched and blued. A copper rod is attached to the end of the tang and peened to the etched/distressed butt plate. Forged copper bolster w/ hammered texture.
Handle: 4 1/2" of Staghorn(Buckhorn) Cholla Cactus filled with black epoxy, rawhide with split leather lacing.
Sheath: The Quilted Red Maple case is fully lined with 1-2 oz leather split, a leather welt, and a Tung oil/buffed paste wax finished. The piece of wood is actually grade AA fiddleback Maple.....flat-cut. It has a very tight quilt figure and brilliant chatoyance. The rawhide upper has a leather lined belt loop, forged copper name plate w/ hammered finish, and split leather lace wrapping. The four handmade bobbles represent the materials used in the whole package(Cholla, steel, and copper). I collected the Yucca thorn while on a backpacking trip in the deserts of the Southwest US.






















This bead was made from a soldered coil of copper wire.


The thorn has a copper ferrule at the top:


This spike is made of the same steel as the blade. Its been ground, partially polished, hardened, polished and heat-colored.


The copper piece reminds me of a Cholla branch.


This is a piece of cholla cactus branch just sanded and oiled up real nice:






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[nocheese4u]

Man if I didnt know better I would imagine that knife had collected a few scalps!! Nice work!

[50calmike]

Damn Peter! Every knife you do leaves me in awe. You are a true artist sir.

[TacoMan5000]

That's pretty cool.

[P. McKinley]

Thanks folks!

nocheese4u - This is likely the sharpest blade I've ever done, but it hasn't earned any scalps....... yet. At the beginning though, I did think this was a bit of a hair-brained idea - trying to turn rusty, 100 year old plow share into a blade and rawhide dog treats into a sheath. I like how it came out though and its damn close to the original image/drawing.