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I've completely rejected television, but I don't think it would make for, um, good television...

Hi Ed - there's a few of us relatively near Locks Heath too.

Nice work! As an alternative to using a coin, could I suggest slitting a length of pipe & unrolling it? It might need annealing, but it is a nice easy source of sheet copper. Even a 15mm pipe gives you almost 2" wide copper.

Condolences Chris.

Nice work - both the bracer and the tutorial. One thing I've found when casing leather is that wetting it thoroughly, then putting it in a plastic bag & leaving it in the fridge overnight helps immensely on getting a good impression when carving. I also use Pro-Carve solution sometimes...

He really hasn't ;)

I bought a tin of the dust as I couldn't believe just *how* bad the reports of it were... New or not, the stuff is not worth having. Really.

Don't forget to sand off the scale (and fractional decarb area) too - or you won't get many sparks for a while... Alternitively, bung it over & I'll do it for you.

Black (or coloured) infill on engraving is another application, although the US engravers seem to tend to prefer Rustoleum (which I *think* is a Smoothrite kind of paint).

I've used borax to preserve squirrel tails before now. Seems to work OK, but I wouldn't want to get it wet.

Not really, more of a lighter grey - it is forming iron tannate in the leather (or wood, in Eric's example), which is black. As Toddy says, it is not all that different to old ink recipes (got one somewhere involving oak galls & iron). The smell of vinegar takes time to fade, but you can...

There's that word again :D As for things like carpet & the like, I tend to go for Stanley blades for that. Weaning myself off using them for leatherwork these days. (OK, yes I do resharpen the things... :o )

Given you can see what is, in sharpening terms, a huge amount of steel being removed - how long do you think your knife is going to exist with constant use of that? Fair enough with a Mora, the abuse is not going to be expensive to replace, but a more valuable knife I'd keep well away from those.

Iron acetate seems to be a fairly stable complex - I have a solution that is now 3 or 4 years old that still dyes quite happily. I keep it out of the light & airtight, other than that no real precautions.

Good point. When you take the last turn, tuck it into the loop formed by the outside straw.

That was my impression - spin it clockwise 90 degrees, repeat 3 & 4 until done.

Oh yes. Quite definitely if you want something where the food tastes nice, as opposed to the "well, you can live on it, but it tastes like..." :)

Indoors diving (with the possible exception of the SETT in Gosport) tends not to do a great deal for me :D

O1 is an excellent choice for stock removal; I buy mine from Cromwell (incidentally, they have a branch down by the Volvo garage in Southampton). I also buy silver steel from them for forging, which seems to be more-or-less W1. Admiral do ship to the UK quite happily, but I haven't used them...

That's a cute thing, Dunc. Still trying to work out what I'd do with a knife to put it up to that price... Hand forged, pattern welded steel (and an interesting, labour intensive pattern at that). Something along the lines of mammoth handles, as previously mentioned. Maybe mokume-gane...