This is beautiful, great work! I especially like the crisp contour lines in the handle.

Thanks! appreciate the feedback

Somehow I missed this one. Nice job on the Damascus pattern.

Michael Samdahl Thanks for the compliment!  I live in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada and North Buck Lake, Alberta.  About a 50% split. I dont have many shop pictures, a couple on my website at https://www.solarstorm.ca/my-journey. Im in Jamaica for 2 more weeks, so will try when I get back to work.  Currently I work out of my garage.  Everything is on castors so that I can roll it out and back so my wife can park in the garage.  HOWEVER! I cant wait until summer, I purchased a Future building (metal quonset) 17'x20' to be a dedicated shop. Once ground thaws, I will start on that.  

For tools, I strongly believe in "need a tool, make a tool".  I built my forge, bought a 100lb anvil.  Took a class where I make a hammer and tongs. I bought a cheap  I made this knife with hand tools as that is all I had at the moment.

I then bought a Velocity grinder from Maritime Knife Supply with a VFD and a 2hp motor.  Built a 8" wheel for it and larger table.  Getting tired trying to do damascus by hand I then bought a 12T Rams Head press from Vans Blacksmithing.  Made a number of different dies for it as it came with none and has a poor design for dies.  Made 2 sets of rounding dies, squaring dies, and a ladder die (lots of hand filing here as I dont have a mill)

for vices I used a cheap Canadian tire vice until a couple of months ago I bought a 60lb leg vice from Princess auto, and a week later, a friends grandfather who was a blacksmith was clearing out his shop and he found out I dabbled and gave a 100lb bench vice which is now my goto vice.  also made a filing jig.

I found an old used drill press online, and the old guy clearing his shop wanted his tools used and when he saw what I was doing, gave me his bench grinder as well as long as I promised not to just sell it.

I build myself 3 more hammers, a rounding hammer, an angle peen hammer, and a small light "detail hammer".  I need more tongs, but also need more time. I cut everything with an angle grinder.

I bought a vacuum pot so I could stabilize my own wood as I have 3.8 acres of wooded land with some beautiful spalted birch and a couple other nice varieties including some diamond willow.

When I was at Princess auto, they were clearing out paint pressure pots for $89, so I bought one of those and converted it so I can cast my own epoxy handle. 

And that is the shop.

As far as pixels for posting?  I use an iPhone, and then Snagit to change the size.  I find if I make the biggest measurement 1024 pixels, most sites will accept them.  I use the ipad and iphone to edit the effects.  Take the pictures using portrait mode and then you get more effects to create pictures like this.