Amber Maple Dagger

There is more than one way I forge laminated steel, and this method yields an almost mirror-image of the lamination line on the left and right side of the blade.  The fittings are Firestorm pattern Damascus with silver spacers and an amber spalted maple handle that has become knows here in the shop as "church wood" since it was taken from a dead maple tree on the property of the first Roman Catholic church built here in Bristol, Virginia in 1860.