- Joined
- Aug 4, 2004
- Messages
- 373
Before carving a replacement handle for my khukuri, I decided to do a trial run first by making a handle for one of my other knives. The handle is hickory and has a really pretty grain, considering there isn't any oil or anything on it. Once I put an oil finish on there, it should be beautiful. The knife is a knife I ground from an old Nicholson file. The file was stamped "Warranted Cast Steel". This steel got really hard, I had to temper it at a really high temperature before it got to what I thought was good for a larger knife. The grind is a fully convex grind. Due to the slight distal taper of the file, it also has a nice balance.
Going off on a tangent here, I got this hickory from a nearby farmer. He also saws lumber, so I was hoping he might have a few scraps that were too small to make into boards. Well, when I asked him it turned out he had a huge pile of it that he was going to use for smoking meats... and it was already cut into perfect knife-handle sized chunks! I picked out the pieces that were cut from the heartwood and had the best-looking grain. So I got 10 or so nice 1.5x1.5x17" chunks of hickory for free. I chose the chunk that looked the best for this project (although most look as good).
Anyway, I cut this chunk of hickory into three pieces. I saved the one that looked the best for the khuk handle, that's actually the un-carved chunk in the pic.
I used my microwave to dry the pieces. What you do is, you take the piece and put it in your microwave at low power (mine was 2 on a 1-10 scale) for 2-3 minutes. Then you let it cool off for 1/2 hour and repeat. You weigh the piece before and after you cook it, and when the weight doesn't change, the piece has had all the water cooked off of it! Very clever, eh? I didn't have an accurate digital scale so what I did was I used a balance scale and used small items like pennies to balance against the weight of the wood. I got this tip from a woodcarver who said he got it from an old ndn carver. On some sort of cosmic truth scale, anything coming from an old ndn must rate pretty high. So I figured this microwave drying buisness must have to work, and it seems like it did. I guess I'll find out if the handle cracks on me.
I shaped the thing using an 80-grit belt and a belt sander, I was suprised how fast the shaping went. One useful tip is, I found that the belt sander was very helpful for shaping even when it isn't running! I left the power off, and I took and moved the handle against the belt. This let me make everything nice and round, since the belt tended to conform to the handle, and the rough grit still removed material pretty fast.
I tried to carve this thing khuk-style (with all the rings and such) by using a sharp knife and a lot of patience. I'm not a very good carver so I had to take this slow, but I think it turned out fairly decent. Next time, though, I'm going to pencil in everything I want to carve on it before I start. It's easy to erase pencil marks, but hard to erase grooves that you've already carved. Another thing I found was that the small hobby files in various shapes (round, square, and three-square) work really good for cleaning out the grooves and making them look nice and even.
Anyway, I would like to make a copper bolster for this knife. The hickory has some coppery-colored streaks running through it that will be highlighted when I oil it, so I think it would go well. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about doing this?
Congratulations!
