Being quite proud with the results so far and not wanting to bore my wife with the gory details I decided to share this the only place it can be. After kicking around the forums and Youtube for a while I decided to have a go at my own knife mod. Not wanting to spend to much money my choice for donor was a simple CS kukri for €25 (there are a couple more handle mod projects for this knife here and other forums). After getting it and handling it for a while I decided that the handle was to thin for me to be comfortable, and the knife handle was trying to still rotate forward in my palm at the end of a swing.
I also quickly run a flexible 60 grit grinding disc across it to see what result I could get, the grind was uneven and coarse on one side. This being my first recurve I have been very gentle, just experimenting to see what works. At this point I don't know how the end result is going to be, have not made up my mind yet what finish I want to achieve.
I started looking around for materials, (trying not to pay for anything BTW) and found some unknown hardwood we have laying around at work.
I am hoping that this will turn out nice when cleaned up, the block you can see is a left over. I waited with collecting the photos and writing this post till I had my new laptop, my old one was a Netbook with 13" screen, very slow and tiny keyboard so I havn't managed to document all the steps properly.
I used a table saw to cut the original blocks in half to give me two slabs of workable handle thickness, but the saw was set out the middle so I got a choice of two thickness to choose from.
The next thing was to find suitable pin material, after looking at the forums and knifemaker sites I chose to try to find some stainless steel. It's the most logical choice for me because I would be searching for a long time trying to find brass (hinges doh) or nickel silver round stock. Luckily when visiting a job site I came across some 4mm round stainless that was thrown in the scrap steel container because it was bent, it consists of two parallel lengths of about 2 meters and one piece that zig zags in between the two parallels, they use it to reinforce brick work layers, I needed bits of about 41mm length so I can make loads of pins from this.
So, now I have my handle stock and pin stock I sat down one evening and try to decide on my options, I wanted to change the angle of the handle in relation to the blade to make it more comfortable for my hand, so I had to rotate the tang in the handle a little bit and see how much flesh is left to drill pin holes.
Hoping this approach will work, next challenge is to drill the holes in the blade tang. Hardened steel does not like to be machined, having bought some new 5%Co drills I managed to get two holes drilled no problem(with the drill press at work) but then the fun started, the first drilled dulled and I couldn't get it properly sharp again and the hole it dulled in just kept eating my drills. Extreme measures were needed so I had to resort to the Oxy-acetylene torch to heat the tang locally to the holes, I kept the blade in a vice to keep the heat from spreading to far up the blade and ruining the Heat treat. After a quick blast the steel was just drill able.
Now I have reference holes in my tang work could start on the handles, I wanted to recess to tang equally in both handle halfs so when finished no or little join line would be visible (also for pinching skin). Clamping each handle onto the blade I drilled the holes through, traced the tang outline and used my fake dremel to mill out the recess, the cheap fake dremel didn't survive this stage because the front bearing sounds like a trapped cat. A quick note: it does pay to get decent end mills, I got 4mm and 6mm Dremel packs of two for €20.
Now that the handles are matched together I find out that the saw cuts are not perflectly flat and have to sand them flatter to keep my join line as close as possible, I changed the belt at work to a new 40 grit (the old one was just burning the wood) and flatten the recess side, at the same time sanding all sides to get to clean wood and start to profile the handle a little bit to take away material quickly, and the front end where I can't get to later. This is something that I should of done first because now I lost most of the recess on the right hand scale, which means I have to redo it, I bought a new cheap multi-tool for €25, looks quite decent. Won't live without it now because I found out it polished my Para2 washers and spine nicely so I have more use for it than I thought.
I still need to do the recess again and decide how I am going to finish the handle, I have got some Epoxy ready to go but still don't know if I am going to just epoxy the handles and pins or if I am going to peen the pins as well, I have modified a 4.5mm drill bit with a taper to 4mm to give room to peen the pins over but don't know if the wood will split, I have seen some light cracks on one already after sanding, it would be a shame to have them break now after so much work.
Some in hand photos
It feels a lot better already in my hand and the front stability is much improved, so when I get a free evening again I'll see if I can get the handle redone and sculpt the handle some more with the sanding drum on the new multi-tool.
I also quickly run a flexible 60 grit grinding disc across it to see what result I could get, the grind was uneven and coarse on one side. This being my first recurve I have been very gentle, just experimenting to see what works. At this point I don't know how the end result is going to be, have not made up my mind yet what finish I want to achieve.
I started looking around for materials, (trying not to pay for anything BTW) and found some unknown hardwood we have laying around at work.
I am hoping that this will turn out nice when cleaned up, the block you can see is a left over. I waited with collecting the photos and writing this post till I had my new laptop, my old one was a Netbook with 13" screen, very slow and tiny keyboard so I havn't managed to document all the steps properly.
I used a table saw to cut the original blocks in half to give me two slabs of workable handle thickness, but the saw was set out the middle so I got a choice of two thickness to choose from.
The next thing was to find suitable pin material, after looking at the forums and knifemaker sites I chose to try to find some stainless steel. It's the most logical choice for me because I would be searching for a long time trying to find brass (hinges doh) or nickel silver round stock. Luckily when visiting a job site I came across some 4mm round stainless that was thrown in the scrap steel container because it was bent, it consists of two parallel lengths of about 2 meters and one piece that zig zags in between the two parallels, they use it to reinforce brick work layers, I needed bits of about 41mm length so I can make loads of pins from this.
So, now I have my handle stock and pin stock I sat down one evening and try to decide on my options, I wanted to change the angle of the handle in relation to the blade to make it more comfortable for my hand, so I had to rotate the tang in the handle a little bit and see how much flesh is left to drill pin holes.
Hoping this approach will work, next challenge is to drill the holes in the blade tang. Hardened steel does not like to be machined, having bought some new 5%Co drills I managed to get two holes drilled no problem(with the drill press at work) but then the fun started, the first drilled dulled and I couldn't get it properly sharp again and the hole it dulled in just kept eating my drills. Extreme measures were needed so I had to resort to the Oxy-acetylene torch to heat the tang locally to the holes, I kept the blade in a vice to keep the heat from spreading to far up the blade and ruining the Heat treat. After a quick blast the steel was just drill able.
Now I have reference holes in my tang work could start on the handles, I wanted to recess to tang equally in both handle halfs so when finished no or little join line would be visible (also for pinching skin). Clamping each handle onto the blade I drilled the holes through, traced the tang outline and used my fake dremel to mill out the recess, the cheap fake dremel didn't survive this stage because the front bearing sounds like a trapped cat. A quick note: it does pay to get decent end mills, I got 4mm and 6mm Dremel packs of two for €20.
Now that the handles are matched together I find out that the saw cuts are not perflectly flat and have to sand them flatter to keep my join line as close as possible, I changed the belt at work to a new 40 grit (the old one was just burning the wood) and flatten the recess side, at the same time sanding all sides to get to clean wood and start to profile the handle a little bit to take away material quickly, and the front end where I can't get to later. This is something that I should of done first because now I lost most of the recess on the right hand scale, which means I have to redo it, I bought a new cheap multi-tool for €25, looks quite decent. Won't live without it now because I found out it polished my Para2 washers and spine nicely so I have more use for it than I thought.
I still need to do the recess again and decide how I am going to finish the handle, I have got some Epoxy ready to go but still don't know if I am going to just epoxy the handles and pins or if I am going to peen the pins as well, I have modified a 4.5mm drill bit with a taper to 4mm to give room to peen the pins over but don't know if the wood will split, I have seen some light cracks on one already after sanding, it would be a shame to have them break now after so much work.
Some in hand photos
It feels a lot better already in my hand and the front stability is much improved, so when I get a free evening again I'll see if I can get the handle redone and sculpt the handle some more with the sanding drum on the new multi-tool.
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