This is a rather interesting project. A friend of mine asked me to make a dagger for him. He is a good friend from high school and we have stayed in touch despite the physical distance. I wanted it to be special.

I came up with an idea for a longish dagger (10.5 inches for the blade alone) that will have a piece of steel cable at the center surrounded by 1095 for the edges. I started up by welding a thin piece of cable (1/2 inch diameter) together. This particular cable has a tight strand pattern that looks really well when etched. I shaped the cable like a bullet and sandwich it between to pieces of 1095 steel. The picture shows what happened at the end.

The most complex and time consuming part of this job was the carving of the handle which is made of a 4.5 inch piece of African Blackwood. The Celtic knot carvings took many hours. The guard, ferrule and pommel are made of stainless steel with some etched patterns.

Here is the drawings for the carving of the handle and some phases of the carving process.

Here is a detail of the cable steel core. The heavy etching results in a pattern that can be "felt" as you pass the finger over it.