Oh no! Not ANOTHER knife...

drilled me some holes last night;


holes...

one hole through the tang to keep the handle attached to the blade, six holes on either side of the tang to absorb shock and hold the handle halves together.

removing material getting the handle profile started;


rough hewn;
 
first I start shaping the 'master' side, (the one with the holes drilled). I'm using a rasp and a half round bastard;


here it is mostly shaped to the profile. I've left plenty of material in order to feel things out as the handle begins to take shape;


OK! I'm finished!

;):D

getting ready to glue er up. A good friend of mine who's a woodworking kind of guy, told me I was on the right track with the Gorilla Glue.


Gorilla Glue is totally waterproof and holds wood together like a hot damn. But, like an idiot, I didn't read the instructions first:rolleyes: You're supposed to lightly dampen the surface which doesn't have glue on it, but I didn't do that. Hopefully everything works out. The handle will be full of epoxy so I don't think it will be too much of a problem, but DUH!

Anyway, my concern with using this glue is that it expands and foams and I really don't want to fill up the tang slot, so I kept 2-3mm of dry area around the perimeter of the tang hole thinking that the glue would squeeze into that area anyway, leaving very little gunk in the tang slot


just about time to leave for my one day weekend! I'll leave the handle clamped up til Monday, then... well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it:)
 
Gorilla glue works very well and I have forgotten to moisten the other surface and there have been no problems Very strong stuff But it does foam up alot hope it does not fill in your tang hole to much maybe keep an eye on it and remove while soft unstead of waiting to get hard
 
Joe, I SO want to say "that's what she said", but I won't:D
 
:D:thumbup:
 
I made a black spacer for this knife, using the cover from my expired passport cover, (this time when I go to Seattle I won't sweat bullets because my passport's 5 years expired. And yes, they did let me into your country anyway:D). It's pretty durable material, and I soaked some Krazy Glue into it;


and here it is about to become part of a knife handle;


mixed me up a batch of West Systems 2 part epoxy, put a little tape over the hole where the tang holdin' pin goes through, slowly poured the epoxy in to avoid building up an air bubble inside, and then inserted the tang. I haven't completely dry fit this handle before gluing it up, but my hopes came true when I hammered the pin all the way through and everything snugged up tight and I didn't see any gaps. Doesn't mean they're not there, but so far so good. Let er sit overnight, heated and comfy in the vise.


And today, this is where I'm at;


gonna bring er home and fire up the drill press tonight. Then, it's all about rasping and filing, rasping and filing, rasping and filing......
 
now that everything is glued up, I guess I'm committed.
:)

here I'm rasping and filing the two sides of the handle down just about to the finished profile;


the final profile of the handle, if everything goes right from here on in;


looks to me like the wood's grain matches fairly closely, from side to side.
From the top of the handle;


From the bottom of the handle;


Forgot to drill a lanyard hole last night, so I'll do that tonight and then start removing material from the sides of the handle, cuz it's just a wee bit too wide at the moment.
 
"Wood grain matches fairly closely":confused:

Looks absolutely spot on to me. :thumbup:

Nice work mate.:cool:

Ian
 
Thanks Ian and Matt, appreciate the encouragement:)

so, time to remove material for the sides of the handle since, if you haven't noticed, it's pretty damn thick;


amazingly, everything worked out well;




these are the pieces which were removed. I think I'll keep em around for posterity's sake;


still thicker than the handle will ultimately be, but definitely gettin closer;


this is about where I'm at now. Still got lots of massaging to do, as it's still pretty clunky, but I'm seeing the end of this project coming up pretty soon which is great because then there's just a couple of sheaths to make, (one for this knife and one for that Ray Richard dagger I slapped together) and then I get to start something completely new. Either that, or maybe I'll finish a couple of partly started knives...
 
now, matching up the guard with the handle material to have a nice, uninterrupted flow;




still plenty of material to remove, but it looks like things are coming together;


Happily, I have found that there are no gaps between the guard, spacers and handle!

Before I glued the handle on, I only pushed the tang pin far enough into the tang to find out whether it lined up closely enough or not. The hole in the tang was a little off- it was off shy of 1mm toward the front of the handle. Once I filled the handle with glue, I hammered the pin all the way through, and I guess what happened was it pulled the knife into the handle somewhat. The reason I know this, is that there WAS a gap between the guard and handle before assembly, and now it's gone.

If I had driven the pin all the way through just to test my fit, I was worried I'd ovalize the hole or cause some other kind of damage. But, the pin fits tight, there are no gaps at all around it, and the guard fits tight and true.

I think I was really lucky this time.

Anyway, I think I'm done with this for today. It's just about there, but it is probably a good idea to finish the handle up with some fresh eyes and once I get to handle the knife a bit as is;

 
This is starting to come together very nicely, Lorien! I am surprised at how well the grain came together - good work!
 
I finished the handle to 220grit and then wiped it all down with 600grit;


the bronze spacer was fluted;




here's a shot of the almost finished handle;


the pins are set with JB Weld now and I'll leave er over the heater for the night;
 
Looks like it is comming together nicely Lorien!! That is looking sweet.
Eric
 
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