Making this guard? Any ideas?

Sawing and hand filing would be much more precise than a grinder I'd think

 

In my opinion, that is the wrong kind of thinking, going into handmade knives... you're going to find a lot of tedium in this craft, better get used to it.
That shape looks easy enough to saw and file out, as Mark has stated. I have difficulty seeing it as a guard, though.

 

Dykem and scratch out your pattern. I would use a cutoff blade in my cut off saw and slowly do each indentation and than go back and finish it with hand files.

My 2 cents worth.

Larry
Tinkerer

 

That could be done with a triangle file and grinder

 

+1 on tinkerer's points.

From a lot of experience, I will tell you that you need to cut the basic blank and slot it first. Don't do that until after HT. Once the basic guard blank is done, the slot is centered, and the profile is right, add the gear look.

For an 8-fold symmetry guard:
Mark a line from the top to the bottom ( 12:00 and 6:00) on the vertical axis through the tang slot
Mark the side axis line ( 3:00 and 9:00) at 90 degrees to the slot.
Mark the spots between these for the other gear teeth.
Saw/grind a small slot on each mark down the center. You can cut diagonal cuts to make a rough tooth.
Use a square file to cut in the final shapes.
Do each tooth part-way, and slowly define all of them as a group- NEVER do one then the next!!!!
Leave some room for fine filing, sanding, and buffing.
The guard can be darkened in FC or Parkerized.

 

I've been wanting to try form dressing a grinding wheel on a bench grinder to shape to do coining/etc like this, like I would do if I was surface grinding form geometry on a piece of tooling.

 

Looks like "brass nuckles" to me. Can we see the full knife?

 

I just want to restate one point in Stacy's advice...

Never do one, then the next!

Do them as a whole, a little bit at a time.

 

What is the reason for doing them all together and not just one at a time?

 

Lets use an example. You want to draw six smiley faces. If you draw them all at the same time, they should be more or less the same. Draw six circles, add six curves smiles, add six sets of eye dots - result is six nearly identical faces.
If you draw one face, then draw another, and repeat six times, the last one will not be like the first.

It is even worse when doing something like a patterned guard or file work. You need to establish the location, set the spacing, deepen each notch, and walk them left and right to keep the spaces between them even. I think every maker who has done a lot of this type work will agree that if you completely make one notch and the move to the next, the last one will not be properly spaced as well as the likelihood that the notched will be slightly different.