How to instructions for making a knife thread

mediamst

mediamst

Joined
Feb 24, 2012
Messages
39
Folks,

In the How to Instructions for Making a Knife thread I saw the following instruction.

Also, the holes should be larger than the rivets/bolts used, so for an 1/8" pin, drill a 3/16" hole;3/16" -drill 1/4";etc. Too large isn't a problem....

My question is, if the hole was too large, and the pin stock did not fit snug, wouldn't there be a visible gap between the handle material and the pin? What would be the fix for that? The glue/resin would fill the gap?

Also, I have 4 knife's complete and are ready to go to heat treat. Once they are back, do I then drill through the holes that I already made in the handle for the pins into the handle material once it comes back from heat treat or do I drill the handle holes prior to heat treat?


Thanks
 
Knives... not "knife's".

Apostrophes are not used to pluralize.

Drill your holes prior to heat treat.
 
Drill pin holes in the tang before Heat treat. The holes in the handle material can be drilled after. the holse in the handle material can be drilled slightly oversize, when you peen the pins they will expand to fill the holes. if you are not peening, holes should be drilled closer to the actual pin size.
 
Those instructions are a little bit of an oversimplification because most beginners won't have the right size bits. So for an 1/8" pin, you want to drill a #30 or #29 size bit. Since most people don't have that, 3/16" is usually the next larger size. You just need to make sure the hole is slightly bigger than the pin you are using. Epoxy will typically fill the gap.

Do all drilling prior to heat treat
 
Yep, those instructions are for the blade not the handle material. For your handle, you want the pins to be snug. You can run a taper for the pins before you set them. You need to use a special bit to counter sink bolts.
 
BTW, what handle material are you considering? If it's something brittle, you'll probably want to avoid peening pins unless you are very careful... so snug hols there might be your best bet. If the material has good structural strength,oversized holes and peening might be a better option.
 
...... A space should be placed both before and after the ellipses .......

Actually it is ellipsis, not ellipses. The sentence above has two ellipses. Each string of dots is an ellipsis.

Back on the topic of the holes ... The directions quoted were for the tang holes. I like then 50% larger than the pin/rivet. They should be one or two drill bit sizes larger at the minimum. The holes through the handle material should just allow the pin/rivet to be inserted with minimal force. It should not need to be hammered in, nor should it fall out easily. The epoxy will fill both the gap around the pin in the tang hole, as well as make the pin secure in the handle hole. If all is done right, and a good grade structural epoxy is used, there will be no need to peen the rivets ..... but it won't hurt if the handle material can withstand the impact and pressure.
 
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