So I recently picked up one of the fancy M390 810's from knifeworks and it's a great knife. Also my brother has been spending thousands of dollars lately on every kind of woodworking implement known to man and I've had a hankering to take advantage of all the cool stuff he has. I have done plenty of wood knife scales for kitchen knives but have never attempted scales for a folder... until now.
I still think I can pull it off, but like everything worth doing it's never as easy as it seems like it should be. The first hurdle was learning the ropes on our newly acquired routing table. I only tore up $20 worth of walnut and $10 worth of curly maple before I finally broke down and spent another $40 something on a good template bit which produced the results I was looking for. Add that to the two saturdays of frustration I've wasted doing things "the hard way" (i.e. guess and check) but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having fun tinkering with all the neat equipment. Now that I've figured out how to route exact copies of the scales without shredding the wood to pieces though I think I could crank them out fairly hassle free.
Hurdle #2 is drilling the holes and counter bores for the hardware. This is where I've gotten so far. After bringing home a set of freshly cut walnut scales from the wood shop, I marked and drilled the appropriate sized holes on my drill press. I started cutting the axis spring cut-outs on the back of one of the scales when I realized I should probably check the holes I cut against the steel liners to make sure I didn't mess up drilling the holes before I invest all that time into the finishing work... Guess what, I messed them up.
Just barely enough to where they won't work.
I need to reset the chuck in my drill press as I noticed a slight wobble in the bit but pressed on anyway because I'm lazy. Well now I've paid the price for my laziness.
You can see the cutout I had started on the back of one of the scales.
So here's my plan, I'll need to cut more scales to mess up on, that shouldn't be an issue now that I've worked out the kinks using the router, and then I will use the g-10 scales as a template and just drill through the existing holes. Then comes the hard part where I cut the axis spring hollows and counterbore the hardware holes and axis knob thing, and then sand, finish etc. If all goes well I have some brazilian rosewood and padauk I will try as well and potentially sell some sets of scales to help fund my knife addiction.
I'd like input on this plan. Am I thinking straight or is there a better way to make sure my holes are flawlessly in line? Also, do you think there would be any interest if I ended up trying to sell wood 810 scales? It's a "tactical" knife so I'm not sure people would be interested in anything other than zombie colored g-10 or whatever 'cool' people go for. If so what would a fair price be for something like this? I know it might be hard to say without seeing the caliber of the finished work, but I'm a perfectionist (in a bad way) so I wouldn't even bother trying to sell anything that doesn't "wow".
Please note that I'm not soliciting for any orders as I have no idea if I'd actually go through with it and this isn't the place to do that anyway, but I'd appreciate any input or opinions anyone wants to offer.
I still think I can pull it off, but like everything worth doing it's never as easy as it seems like it should be. The first hurdle was learning the ropes on our newly acquired routing table. I only tore up $20 worth of walnut and $10 worth of curly maple before I finally broke down and spent another $40 something on a good template bit which produced the results I was looking for. Add that to the two saturdays of frustration I've wasted doing things "the hard way" (i.e. guess and check) but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having fun tinkering with all the neat equipment. Now that I've figured out how to route exact copies of the scales without shredding the wood to pieces though I think I could crank them out fairly hassle free.
Hurdle #2 is drilling the holes and counter bores for the hardware. This is where I've gotten so far. After bringing home a set of freshly cut walnut scales from the wood shop, I marked and drilled the appropriate sized holes on my drill press. I started cutting the axis spring cut-outs on the back of one of the scales when I realized I should probably check the holes I cut against the steel liners to make sure I didn't mess up drilling the holes before I invest all that time into the finishing work... Guess what, I messed them up.
Just barely enough to where they won't work.
I need to reset the chuck in my drill press as I noticed a slight wobble in the bit but pressed on anyway because I'm lazy. Well now I've paid the price for my laziness.
You can see the cutout I had started on the back of one of the scales.
So here's my plan, I'll need to cut more scales to mess up on, that shouldn't be an issue now that I've worked out the kinks using the router, and then I will use the g-10 scales as a template and just drill through the existing holes. Then comes the hard part where I cut the axis spring hollows and counterbore the hardware holes and axis knob thing, and then sand, finish etc. If all goes well I have some brazilian rosewood and padauk I will try as well and potentially sell some sets of scales to help fund my knife addiction.
I'd like input on this plan. Am I thinking straight or is there a better way to make sure my holes are flawlessly in line? Also, do you think there would be any interest if I ended up trying to sell wood 810 scales? It's a "tactical" knife so I'm not sure people would be interested in anything other than zombie colored g-10 or whatever 'cool' people go for. If so what would a fair price be for something like this? I know it might be hard to say without seeing the caliber of the finished work, but I'm a perfectionist (in a bad way) so I wouldn't even bother trying to sell anything that doesn't "wow".
Please note that I'm not soliciting for any orders as I have no idea if I'd actually go through with it and this isn't the place to do that anyway, but I'd appreciate any input or opinions anyone wants to offer.
