I was in need of a checkering file the other day to coin a spacer. I texted a buddy who is one of those guys who has everything. He brought me a set of gunstock checkering tools. Not what I'd asked for, but cool none the less. I immediately hatched an idea for a checkered handle bowie. Not being one to tackle a huge project without a trial run, I worked yesterday on my first checkered handle knife. I shot some WIP pics along the way to give a basic outline of the process.
First thing, you have to have the handle pretty much finished before you do the checkering. I used hidden pins to keep everything lined up, and a tiny bit of superglue to hold it all together for shaping and polishing. Here's a pic of the knife after rough shaping, but before I took the bolsters to 1200 grit and the wood to 600. I could have finished the knife entirely, glue up, polish, and all, and then done the checkering, but since this was my first checkering attempt, it seemed to me like there was too much screw up potential. The way I did it this time, if something had gone catastrophically wrong, I could have replaced the scale without having to tear the knife apart.
Here's a shot showing the location of the pockets for two 1/4" hidden pins. I had originally set the blade up for a 1/8 mosaic pin and a 1/4 thong hole and had "swiss cheesed" the rest of the tang with 1/4" holes. I used two of the weight holes for the hidden pins.
This worked great! I superglued a couple pieces of longer pin stock into the pin holes, then clamped the pin stock in my vise. Provided a solid hold with no wiggling, and was easily removable afterward.
I used a caliper set at .2 inches to scribe a line to set the border of the checkering area. The .2 was arbitrary, just looked about like what I wanted.
This next pic shows how I made the border cuts. It's hard, since I'm a novice, to cut curved layout lines without some kind of guide. I used some masking tape carefully placed along the scribed lines. The thickness of the tape was just enough to guide the cutter to put the lines where I wanted.
Something else I should point out from the picture above... You'll see the first two lines of the pattern laid out. In this case, they were arbitrary at about the angle I wanted. Supposedly 1:3 is an acceptable ratio for the layout, but I just eyeballed it.
You want to lay out all the lines in one direction before you go back to doing them the other direction. Your master lines from the picture above will be enough to guide you when you change directions. In this case, I'm a novice, and my two-line cutter was dull, so I had a heck of a time getting the lines evenly spaced. As far as checkering goes, this is fairly poor. Several of the youtubes I watched recommended that you lay out all the lines lightly, then deepen them later. Don't try to take it all in one pass. Also, don't cut your border line too deep until the very end. Gives you a little more margin for error on the layout.
Here's what I ended up with on the first side. As a first effort, not terrible. The back half looks OK.
I didn't take a pic of deepening the border. You can use a single cutter, or a v chisel called a "veiner."
Here's a trick I learned from finishing a gunstock back in the day. You'll invariably have some overruns that generate scratches in your finish outside the checkering border. You'll want to clean them up with sandpaper, but you don't want to sand the tops off of your checkered diamonds. The key is tape and a razor blade. First you put the tape on the handle and rub it in hard. If you have sticky enough tape, you can do it by hand, but I used one of my leather-backed sanding sticks to rub it in.
Alright... once you have the tape applied, use a razor blade (or a knife, we're knifemakers after all) and cut through the tape along your border line. Remove the tape outside, leaving the tape covering your checkering. That way you can sand as necessary without risk to your checkering.
After that, it's just knifemaking. I glued the knife up with the hidden pins in place. Then I re-polished the bolsters to 1200, taped them off, and buffed the bolsters shiny. I didn't want to buff out the handle. One last tip... a toothbrush works well for cleaning out the dust and gunk from the checkered area. Overall, it turned out just OK. Somebody will fall in love with it and take it home, but it won't be anybody who's a connoisseur of checkering.
Here's a shot in some slanted light that really shows the checkering.
Here are a couple of pictures of the finished knife.
Hope somebody learned something. Anybody out there who's got tips for me on how to do the next one better, your input is welcome.
First thing, you have to have the handle pretty much finished before you do the checkering. I used hidden pins to keep everything lined up, and a tiny bit of superglue to hold it all together for shaping and polishing. Here's a pic of the knife after rough shaping, but before I took the bolsters to 1200 grit and the wood to 600. I could have finished the knife entirely, glue up, polish, and all, and then done the checkering, but since this was my first checkering attempt, it seemed to me like there was too much screw up potential. The way I did it this time, if something had gone catastrophically wrong, I could have replaced the scale without having to tear the knife apart.
Here's a shot showing the location of the pockets for two 1/4" hidden pins. I had originally set the blade up for a 1/8 mosaic pin and a 1/4 thong hole and had "swiss cheesed" the rest of the tang with 1/4" holes. I used two of the weight holes for the hidden pins.
This worked great! I superglued a couple pieces of longer pin stock into the pin holes, then clamped the pin stock in my vise. Provided a solid hold with no wiggling, and was easily removable afterward.
I used a caliper set at .2 inches to scribe a line to set the border of the checkering area. The .2 was arbitrary, just looked about like what I wanted.
This next pic shows how I made the border cuts. It's hard, since I'm a novice, to cut curved layout lines without some kind of guide. I used some masking tape carefully placed along the scribed lines. The thickness of the tape was just enough to guide the cutter to put the lines where I wanted.
Something else I should point out from the picture above... You'll see the first two lines of the pattern laid out. In this case, they were arbitrary at about the angle I wanted. Supposedly 1:3 is an acceptable ratio for the layout, but I just eyeballed it.
You want to lay out all the lines in one direction before you go back to doing them the other direction. Your master lines from the picture above will be enough to guide you when you change directions. In this case, I'm a novice, and my two-line cutter was dull, so I had a heck of a time getting the lines evenly spaced. As far as checkering goes, this is fairly poor. Several of the youtubes I watched recommended that you lay out all the lines lightly, then deepen them later. Don't try to take it all in one pass. Also, don't cut your border line too deep until the very end. Gives you a little more margin for error on the layout.
Here's what I ended up with on the first side. As a first effort, not terrible. The back half looks OK.
I didn't take a pic of deepening the border. You can use a single cutter, or a v chisel called a "veiner."
Here's a trick I learned from finishing a gunstock back in the day. You'll invariably have some overruns that generate scratches in your finish outside the checkering border. You'll want to clean them up with sandpaper, but you don't want to sand the tops off of your checkered diamonds. The key is tape and a razor blade. First you put the tape on the handle and rub it in hard. If you have sticky enough tape, you can do it by hand, but I used one of my leather-backed sanding sticks to rub it in.
Alright... once you have the tape applied, use a razor blade (or a knife, we're knifemakers after all) and cut through the tape along your border line. Remove the tape outside, leaving the tape covering your checkering. That way you can sand as necessary without risk to your checkering.
After that, it's just knifemaking. I glued the knife up with the hidden pins in place. Then I re-polished the bolsters to 1200, taped them off, and buffed the bolsters shiny. I didn't want to buff out the handle. One last tip... a toothbrush works well for cleaning out the dust and gunk from the checkered area. Overall, it turned out just OK. Somebody will fall in love with it and take it home, but it won't be anybody who's a connoisseur of checkering.
Here's a shot in some slanted light that really shows the checkering.
Here are a couple of pictures of the finished knife.
Hope somebody learned something. Anybody out there who's got tips for me on how to do the next one better, your input is welcome.
