Kind of a Persian fighter build, final pictures, for now

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Mark I am very impressed with the work of art you are creating. I will be waiting by the mail box until you send the next WIP. :D Thanks a lot. Terry
 
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OK, we're ready to put some in nickle silver liners to accent the mokume.

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I made some forming blocks to shape the spacers, a quick squish in the press and they are shaped.

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The liners are marked for the tang holes, and cut out with a Dremel tool. I use the socket (lower right) and a rawhide mallet to fine tune the curves.

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I welded some threaded rod into a slot cut into the end of the tang and then annealed it. It's important to anneal the weld so it doesn't crack.

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I'm using thin leather for liners on either side of the pieces.
The amber and the abalone I'm using can be brittle so extra care is needed when assembling the knife. I use red suede leather between all the joints for several reasons. The leather provides a cushion between the brittle materials so they don't break when the assembly is cinched together. It also provides a strata to bond to, if something should crack, the leather sandwiched on both sides holds it all together. Also, the amber is full of microscopic cracks, the cyano-acrylate glue leaches the red die out of the leather and it migrates through the minute cracks in the amber creating a very cool spiderweb effect as it glues up all the cracks.

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All of the leather liners are in place and the "dry fit" looks good.

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I will be "roping" the edges of the nickle silver liners. That is to say I am going to file-work a twisted rope pattern on the edges of the liners similar to "coining". I also need to get the handle off of the tang so I can shape it independent of the guard, for these reasons I'm using grease (the red stuff) as a resists on all of the parts I don't want to stick together as I assemble it again for partial gluing.

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After all the parts are loosely fit on the tang and the nut is threaded on, I inject thin cyano-acrylate into the joints I want to glue and tighten the assembly. The red you see is some of the grease I used as parting compound but mostly it's the red die that leached out of the leather when the glue reacted with it. If I did everything right, there should be thin red line on both sides of each amber spacer and the abalone pieces, the amber should be solidly stabilized and it should all come apart for the next few steps.

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After an hour a quick clean-up shows everything to be looking pretty good.

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Here's another look at it with the profile refined a little bit.
 
crazy!
 
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I let the glue harden overnight and disassembled the handle. I removed the guard and put it all back together again without the guard. I want to be able to shape the handle without the guard in the way. I filled the area where the guard would be with epoxy to hold the handle pieces where they belong and to provide support for the sanding belts while I shape the handle. Without a "dummy guard" it would be really easy to round over the corners on the handle pieces where they transition into the guard, I want the corners sharp and crisp.

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I sanded the epoxy "guard" flush with the handle. Without the real guard in the way its easy to extend the lines of the handle through to the blade while I rough in the profile of the handle. This is often referred to as "flow", the lines of the blade flow through the guard to the handle.


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I round the corners on the disk sander.....

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and finish refining the shape on the belt sander.

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It's at this point where I check the shape and make any changes needed.

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This morning I started hand sanding with 280 grit. With handles of differing materials its really easy to sand hollow spots into the softer areas, similar to "graining" in wood working, gotta watch out for that.

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I progressed all the way through the grits to 1200.

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Here's a look at the handle sanded to 1200 grit with a thin application of paste wax. Its beginning to look like a knife. I will study the handle for a day or two to make sure it is how I want it. In the mean time I will start to shape the guard.

Stay tuned.
 
The work on that handle is incredible....a milestone in knifemaking! Of course the major part of your handles is mindblowing.... :thumbup::thumbup:
 
Sheesh...that epoxy guard method is an amazing trick. You truly are a creative genius when it comes to using all sorts of materials at the same time.
 
Thank you everyone for the nice comments. I like to work on several knives at the same time, it makes the overall time on each knife longer but in the long run saves time.

More soon, please stay tuned.
 
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