Photos Keyhole antler bowie - WIP

[JTknives]

I figured it was time to assemble all my pictures into a WIP. So let’s just jump right in.

First up is forging the blade. Customer wanted a forged finish.

Next I needed totoss it into some vinegar over night.

I found some nice whitetail antler.

I ground off the eye guard and checked it’s curve agenst the tang of the bowie.

After the scale removal I cleaned up the forged edge bevels.

Next I set it up in the mill and squared the shoulders up and tang section.

Continued on the next post.

 

[JTknives]

The next step was to tackle forging the guard. I somehow don’t have pictures of forging the multi bar twist bar. But I have a pic of the etched bar.

I then forge welded a cube of wrought iron onto it.

After hot cutting

It then got a clean up on the grinder and tossed on the mill to drill out the keyhole.

After drilling it’s ready to shape the sides of the keyhole.

I have a special rest plate for the grinder and a thin platten to grind into small places.

After cleaning up the sides.

 

[JTknives]

Now onto the most intimidating part. Fitting the antler to the guard. Starts with marking out the keyhole shape onto the antler.

Then rough out to thoes lines

Then behind the absurdly long tedious process for fitting the antler to the keyhole. It involves using a special shaped scraper and a some lead. Mark the keyhole with lead and try and fit the antler. Where the lead rubs off onto the antler you scrap away and try agian. This was days of work and I lost track of how much time it took.

After it was fit I put it on the surface grinder and took the guard down flush to the antler on both sides.

Next we needed a slot for the tang. So onto the mill we went and got everything squared up.

Now bush out the needle files and start fitting the slot to the tang

Super close and just round over the ends to take the radius between the tang and ricasso.

Nice and tight fit.

 

[JTknives]

Now back to the handle. We slot the end of the keyhole and drill/scrape it out to fit the tang.

Next we assemble the handle and start shaping the guard area around the keyhole to the antler.

Here I used a hardened chisel to carve away the lower section as it was to much to shape with a file.

It allows me to get up nice and tight agenst the guard and remove the small cold shut that was along the weld line.

After shaping we fire up the torch and shape the lower section of the guard.

Somewhere along the line I finished sanded the blade and heat treated. Here it is with its hand rubbed finish.

After this it went into the heat treat oven with nitrogen shealding. This keeps the finish nice and clean of scale. After the heat treating it got a hand rubbed finish with green buffing compound.

Now back to the guard. Everything was filed and sanded to a nice finish. Then the internal surfaces masked with finger nail polish. Then etched.

After a few etched and cleaning this is the result.

 

[Bigfattyt]

Looking forward to this!!

 

[JTknives]

Now onto the handle. I cold forged some copper down and gave it a nice corse hammered finish and cut it out on the bandsaw.

Next the edges where thinned out along the edges and shaped to fit the crown.

It was then stamped with my name and marked for rivets.

Also around this time the antler got a potperm finish to age the freshly exposed white antler. Right after the coating it’s realy dark but as time goes on it lightens up and has a more natural aged finish.

Copper rivets where made and fitted to the cap and matching holes where drilled for the rivets.

 

[Daniel Swanson]

That is unbelievably cool. Ive seen those keyhole knives and I assumed it was really hard, you just confirmed my suspicion. Thats going to be a really special blade.

 

[JTknives]

After that everything was stripped down and cleaned to get ready for final glue up. Under the copper cap is a hole that connects to the tang. This is how I filled the antler around the tang. The tang had notches cut into it as well. After the tang was glued up I epoxied the copper cap in place with the rivets. Then it was a waiting game with qtips and paper towels with alcohol to clean up any little drips or leaks. And after that it got a sheath and out to coop for pictures. This is the finish results. My customer was tickled pink and could not of been more then happy with it. It was a long journey spanning months of work. But it was was worth it and I had fun along the way. P.S. I’m sure there are some steps and pictures I missed. I all add them as I find them. Thanks guys - JT

 

[Wild Bill 1]

JT thanks for showing that.I have never seen that done and now I know why!Very nice work. WB

 

[JTknives]

Well I guess I kinda went off the rails with this. But it was mostly becaus I did it how I thought it should be done. And there is not a lot of info out there. But I guess most people that do it don’t have a tang on there blade and the keyhole is the only attachment point for the handle. When I started this project I figured everyone had a tang on there keyhole lol.

 

[TLR]

Thank you for that write up!!

 

[Ken H>]

JT, all I can say is WOW!!!! Now place yourself right up there next to the museum quality knife artists! WOW! Best of the best

 

[i4Marc]

Nicely done JJ.

 

[john april]

nice work !

 

[Robert Erickson]

Thanks JT that looks awesome!

 

[weo]

Wow! Thanks JT. I've been hoping to see some more WIPs like this after Nick Wheeler's Stuck in the Metal, and you definitely fit the bill.
More please!!!!

 

[Mink]

Hope to see this as an entry in the annual best Bowie contest this year. Superb work.

 

[Drew Riley]

Whoa.That turned out amazing.

I like how the antler "aged", and I didn't previously know about using potassium permanganate... I'll have to give that a shot next time I do an antler handled knife.

 

[LARRYZ10]

Very impressive work. Thank you for sharing the process. Larry

 

[mknife]

Thanks a lot for sharing! really interesting.