Orikaze - Balance

This is a knife inspired by Legolas' fighting knives from Lord of the Rings. It was a personal mission based on an off-hand comment by my cousin, musing that it would be cool to cut his wedding cake with such a knife. I took it upon myself to do whatever I could to make his dream come true . I took some liberties with the design for practicalities sake: I modified the brass bolster and quillion on the handle in order to provide perfect 50/50 balance at the hilt, and refrained from gold inlay on the handle and blade for sanitation's sake-I wouldn't want little bits of frosting to get stuck in there and cultivate. However I do plan on using my newly acquired proficiency in inlays in upcoming projects.

This has likely been my most intensive commission so far. Not merely for the polish I was striving to achieve, but because most of the other commissions I've completed were done so as an interpretation of vague requirements my clients had verbally described, and I loosely sketched. My usual procedure is rather fluid. However here I did my best to translate images I was able to capture of the blade from the movie, to live steel. Unfortunately I didn't have access to any official replicas of which I could trace.

This is hand-forged (in my very cramped garage) high-carbon steel, with full tang construction. The tang is fused to the brass bolster. It has physical (brass pins) and chemical (JB weld epoxy) both holding the blade to the handle, as well as the brass hardware to the wood. The handle is maple, sanded up to 800 grit with a final rub of 2500. It's coated and infused with frankly unreasonable amounts of tung oil, and finished with Eagle carnauba car wax for a warm feel, but a glassy smooth texture.