I posted this link on my daily blog today BUT the blog site seems to be down at the server so for all you crftsmen/women out there take a look at the results of the application of ultimate skill and ability...truly works of art and the creation of a tool that defies physics...
http://www.shivakicustomknives.com/

You wouldn't want to use this for Cut and Restored Rope in a kids' show, huh?

;)

Amos McCormick

But think how fast you could carve "Card from Bar of Soap"! Or Cross tie!

Bob

Supposedly the Damascus steel seen in the photos (the Japanese call it otherwise, but it is produced using the same method -- repeated folding and hammer-welding together of low- and high-carbon steels, sometimes alternated with other metals added for appearance &c.) is that which so perplexed Richard the Lionhearted during the Crusades. A Saracen took his scimitar and sliced a silk as it wafted upon the breeze. "How can that be cut which has no substance?" Richard is reported to have incredulously asked. A blade such as one of these is the answer.

Of course, Saracen blades were also rumoured to have been tempered in the living bellies of exceedingly unfortunate slaves, a practise one hopes has since subsided.

Leland

That, my friends is one very, very expensive knife.

runs either $1250.00 for "clay tempered"
or
$3800.00 for "Samurai Steel"

Wow that is Awesome!