Thanks Everybody.
We are going to cut the pocket into the butt cap that conceals the nut that holds the whole thing together and holds the inlay....
but first we need a way to hold it in the mill vise. I squared up a block of hard maple and scribed the center of it with my height gauge. Then I centered the butt cap on it and scribed the outline of it. Using the manual mill I cut out a pocket for the butt cap.
Then I inserted the butt cap and scribed the center of it...
and laid out the parameters of the pocket for the inlay and drew in the outlines of an oval by hand.
Then I milled out that pocket. I could have used the CNC mill to do all this but for a one-off piece, the manual mill is faster, and it keeps the "hand-made" in "hand-made knife".
Here's how it looks out of the milling machine, I'll clean it up a bit with a Dremel tool.
Next, we get the inlay materials together. I'll be using blue amber for the piercings that we can see through. The translucence of it will sparkle in the quillions. For the inlays that we can't see through I'll be laminating abalone onto the backs of the blue amber. The abalone will hide the mechanics of the construction of the knife (the tang in the center of the guard and the tang nut in the butt cap). It will also reflect light back through the blue amber, similar to how an "ideal-cut" diamond works, the effect should be like sparkly tortoise shell.
I've never seen this done, and although I have done similar things with different materials, this is a first for me (there are a lot of firsts for me in this knife). Experimentation is what makes knife making exciting for me, it opens up the possibilities for new and exciting things. It also opens up the possibilities for mistakes, but I feel like if I'm not making mistakes, I'm not trying hard enough, I'm not expanding my capabilities. I have made a couple mistakes on this knife (and there's still time for more) but fortunately they haven't been insurmountable, I've just had to do some things over.
More later, thanks for watching.