Help with scales on full tang knife...

You can drill the holes before tapering the tang, just make the tang holes oversize, AND...


Drill all your holes in one slab using the tang as a guide, then use the first slab as the guide for drilling holes in your second slab. Doing it this way, if the holes are a little off axis they will still line up slab to slab and will always go smoothly through the holes in your tang.
 
Same method as for a flat tang, except line up dill bit perpendicular to the centerline axis of the tang...
 
Gib, Absolutely agree about the matching angle on the scales & tang. Click the link below for an illustration of how I'd compensate for it, thereby doing what Jerry and howiesatwork proposed. This assumes two things:
1. your drill table is totally flat & level and the drill bit is plumb with no runout
2. your knife doesn't have a distal taper to the blade

This method likely wouldn't work for uneven-surfaced scale materials like the bone that Dana originally asked about. It also would not work for distally tapered blades since the level attached to the blade (use a magnetic level ;) ) wouldn't be parallel with the blade centerline. Thus we would have no reference to adjust the blade centerline parallel with the drill press table.

http://www.oz.net/~malinski/tapered-tang-drilling.jpg

(stuck in a link vs the image to keep this thread loading faster :) )
 
I taper every tang on every knife I make (very rare exceptions) and it just isn't a problem, done as suggested. You really don't need to match any angles. I drill all my holes before tapering. When you drill the slabs you can even be substantially off perpendicular and it will still work IF you use the first slab as the guide for the second, and put pins in the holes each time you drill through to hold everything in alignment. If you're off perpendicular when you drill one slab, the drill will naturally run off perpendicular in the same direction when you drill the second one. The important thing is that the holes all go through the tang holes, which they will when done this way. I never use a vise. For rounded slabs I just use some wadded up paper shop towel as a rest and try to keep it as level as possible but I doubt I ever do.


It works.
 
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