u/Fearless_Wafer_1493

This is the bevel-grinding stage. The steel is Turkish Damascus, and even before etching you can start to see the pattern waking up as the bevels come down. Right now it's all about chasing clean lines — keeping the grind even on both sides and getting that flow from spine to edge to look right. It's the make-or-break stage for me; if the geometry isn't honest here, no amount of polishing later fixes it.

Plan is to take this one all the way through and post each stage as I go — heat treat, the Damascus etch reveal, handle work, and final finish. Figured some of you might enjoy following a build from blank to finished knife.

Happy to answer anything about the process, steel, or grind. Also open to critique — always something to tighten up.

Spent the morning machining handle scales for a new folder we're working on. Still rough — you can see them set in the fixture compound, fresh off the mill before cleanup and finishing. That ornate border is what we're chasing on this design.

For the blade we're going with a dagger profile — the symmetrical, double-edged silhouette — but only one side will actually be sharpened. So you get the aggressive dagger look without the legal and practical baggage of a true double-edge. The false edge stays unsharpened.

Lots left to do, but happy with where the scales are sitting. Progress posts to follow.

(Disclosure: I'm the maker — Noblie Custom Knives. Just sharing the build, not selling.)

Finally finished a pair of Ghostbusters beads I've been wanting to do for my Microtech for a while, and figured this crowd would appreciate them.

There's Slimer mid-chomp and the classic No-Ghost logo done as a two-sided bead. Both went through the full process: modeled from scratch in 3D, printed in resin, then hand-sanded to clean up every layer line, hand-painted, and sealed with a protective clear coat so they hold up to pocket carry and don't rub off over time.

I had a little fun with the presentation too and stuck them in mini "radioactive materials" containment capsules, felt fitting for a couple of ghosts.

Second collection of Turkish ceramics just landed and I'm a little obsessed. These are hand-painted in the Iznik/Kütahya tradition — cobalt blue on white, with the classic carnations, tulips, hyacinths and curling saz leaves.

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The part that gets me every time is the raised white dotwork. Every one of those little dots is applied by hand, slip-trailed so it sits up off the surface, and the densest panels must have thousands of them. You really only appreciate the labor when you're holding it under good light.

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Lineup this time: a tall ruffled-rim bottle vase, a round lidded jar with a pointed finial, and two display chargers. The plates are on stands for now but I keep moving them around the house trying to find the right spot.

Curious what other collectors here think — anyone else into Iznik-style work? Always looking for makers worth following.

Some time ago I shared a collection of Eastern vases here, and that post received a lot of interesting feedback:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceramics/comments/whmhgj/my_ceramic_collection_i_bought_them_in_istanbul/

Now I wanted to share another find from the Noblie collection: a group of hand-painted porcelain chess sets.

What caught my attention is that these are not just functional chess pieces, but small ceramic sculptures. Each set has its own theme, with historical costumes, theatrical figures, relief details, glazing, gilding, and different approaches to color.

Some pieces are very expressive and richly painted, while others are much more restrained, using white porcelain and small gold accents. I find that contrast especially interesting from a ceramics point of view.

I’d be curious to hear what people here think about the modeling and painting work. Do you prefer the highly detailed colorful sets, or the cleaner porcelain pieces with minimal decoration?

Made this little faceted bead for a paracord lanyard and wanted to share it here.

Instead of the usual rounded barrel, I went with a cube/faceted shape — flat planes with crisp edges, which is a bit harder to keep clean on a material like this but really shows off the structure of the ivory.

The material is stabilized mammoth tusk: genuine Ice Age ivory recovered from permafrost, then resin-stabilized so it can take a high polish and hold up to everyday handling. What I love about this piece is that you can read the natural layers right across the faces — the creamy core, the warm amber tones, and that dark band near the outer edge where the original surface of the tusk was. None of that color is added; it's all the natural aging of the ivory.

Drilled through the center for the cord. Happy to answer questions about the shaping or finishing.

Made this little barrel-shaped bead for a paracord lanyard and figured this community might appreciate the materials more than most.

The light bands are stabilized mammoth tusk — Pleistocene ivory dug up from the Siberian permafrost, then resin-stabilized so it can take a polish and survive everyday handling without checking or flaking. The dark bands are bog oak (morta): oak that's been buried in peat bogs and riverbeds for hundreds to thousands of years, where the tannins react with iron in the water and slowly turn the wood near-black.

So it's basically two very different "fossils" sitting side by side — Ice Age ivory against millennia-old mineralized wood. I liked the contrast of the warm cream against the cold dark grain, and the classic barrel shape keeps it simple so the materials do the talking. Drilled through the center for the cord.

Happy to answer questions about working either material — mammoth tusk in particular behaves nothing like modern bone or antler under tools.