Another quick tutorial...

[Phillip Patton]

I make a lot of knives with stacks of spacers between the handle and guard, like this one: http://www.pattonblades.com/111909-4.jpg

When I first started, I used fewer, thicker spacers, and drilled the tang slot holes in each piece one at a time.

Eventually I started liking the look of more, thinner spacers, and started clamping them together with vise grips to drill them all at once.

This worked fairly well, except that every piece had burrs on the side the drill exits from which had to be ground off, and they tend to bend a lot, and have to be straightened on the anvil.

Yesterday, I decided it was time for a change, and came up with a jig for drilling them which keeps them all straight and clean. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

 

[amcardon]

Very nice. I just did a leather bolster for a hidden tang knife and should have done something like this, would have kept it a little more even.

I can only imagine this would help considerably when working with a solid material for spacers/bolsters.

By the way, I love your knife designs!

 

[J. Rosa]

Thanks for posting these tutorials Phillip.

 

[Leu Custom]

cool tutorial ! i made something like that last month (without the 4 holes) ! now i know what to use it for !