The Knife

My friend Mr. Oka makes many things, boats, houses, delicious Thai curry and knives. He offered to show me how to make one and over the last 4 months I've been working on my first hand made knife.

I had a lot of fun sketching interesting designs. This was my favorite.

After drawing the outline on a piece of steal I drilled out holes to make cutting out the shape with a hack saw easier.



I further refined the shape with various files. I also used a belt sander for some of the larger areas.



After filing it into shape and then sanding it into a thinner piece of steal I worked on the edge, carefully.



Once the shape was more or less perfected I used sand paper to polish it. I started at around 300 and worked all the way down to 2000 which feels smoother than notebook paper.



I made the handle out of ebony, cut it into shape and screwed it into place. From here I used a hacksaw to cut off the metal bits, a file to get the shape and a belt sander to get a smooth surface.




This is the final product except for a few tweaks here and there. I still need to put the edge on and sand down the wood in a few places. It turned out pretty nicely for my first and possibly only hand made knife. If I ever do make another I've got lots of new ideas.

Headlines

A few thousand people came to Yakushima from the mainland and even from overseas to see the total solar eclipse that intersected the island. Unfortunately it rained that day and all we saw was the sky darken and then turn back to its smokey gray. This girl wasn't as upset as she looks but there were definitely a lot of gloomy faces that day.






I had the idea that we should show some of our photos at a restaurant or some other public place and Tomoko made it happen. We chose six prints each and a cute pasta place not far from where I live gave us the okay. They said they wanted even more prints and asked if we could make postcards to sell. Its pretty exciting to have our own public showcase.





The Board of Education threw me a going away dinner last week at a nice Japanese restaurant. My boss who is directly above me is on the far right, bottom row.





I went around the island again last weekend and got a few more shots of the wildlife. If I got too close the baby would squeak and and run to have her mother hold her.












This little guy was pulling bugs out of the dirt and eating them.

July

This is my last week of school and tomorrow is my last day of classes. The next few weeks are a procession of farewell parties and last minute outings. With only a few more weeks on the island I've got to start packing and preparing for life back in the States.

Above is a picture of Tomoko at a restaurant in Nagata.







A Japanese staple, tofu, with dried smoked mackeral shavings.






We went out to get pictures of the big waterfall in the moonlight but the only pictures that turned out were the pics of the moon.





Coral with Tomoko's macro lens.






A fisherman's boat in Shimoda, a small port town.






One more spider for all you spider enthusiasts.

Flowers and Grass and a bug.

This is a flower special. People seem to like flowers so I decided to go all out this time with lots of flowers.