CS Laredo Bowie Handle Attachment

Jared, looks great.

A couple questions:

(1) Did you solder the guard?

(2) Are the pins through the tang or surrounding the tang?

I noticed your father's Trailmaster didn't have the little tooling hole that the other one had.

FYI, I found some Japanese drill bits that claim to be good for "highly efficient drilling of hardened steel of 50 to 70 HRC":

http://www.nachi-fujikoshi.co.jp/eng/new/pre/020305.htm

Not sure where you can buy them, but if they work as well as they claim, they would be an outstanding purchase for anyone interested in rehandling production knives!

I think I need to find an older used Trailmaster (uncoated) with the blade in top shape (but maybe with the kraton in lesser condition). You could probably buy one like that for a song and it would be perfect for this project. With the newer powder coated ones you can't solder the guard.
 
To answer some of your questions,
-I did not solder the guard. The metal shims and original epoxy were enough to keep it well in place.
-I did pin around the tang, but I nothched the tang with 4 "V" shaped notches using the edge on my grinding wheel. The pins went through the handle material and into these notches to further secure the handle in place. I had to do this as there was no tooling hole.
-The 1/4" lanyard tubing went through the original 5/16" hole.

It was alot of improv, making it up as I went along but I learned ALOT, and I have another one to do now. I have an old Gerber Australian Bowie that's been sitting in a drawer for 12 years with no handle, so when I get to that one, I'll have a much better plan of attack.

P.S. The mustard treatment is something I read about in Blade magazine by Wayne Goddard. You can dab ordinary mustard on a arbon steel blade and it ages and discolors the steel in a fantastic pattern. I dabbed the mustard on with my finger tip to make a pattern of little blobs, let it sit for 20 minutes and rinsed it off. It ended up with a weird damascus type look. You can keep going with the finish as far as you want if you want a finer, more aged appearance. Make sure to rinse thourougly and oil it down afterwards. It's a fun experiment.
 
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