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Opinel No 8. Handle and blade work
- Thread starter Msturm
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2012
- Messages
- 179
Came out great, excellent work!
Henry Beige
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2015
- Messages
- 3,747
Very nice!
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2013
- Messages
- 4,897
Very nicely done. I like the looks of it.
I did drop the point a bit! I forgot to mention that. I thought it looked a bit better. Thanks!
I did not take any pictures but I will give you a run down right now as best as I can. . This took a lot longer than it needed too as I don't have access to power tools at all. Here are the tools I used
Here goes:
Step 1. I used the farrier's rasp to knock down the beachwood handle on the knife so there are two flat planes on which to glue the scales. Finished up with fine nicholson file to square everything up. Eyeballed it and used a flat scraper and sunlightto check for low spots.
Step 2. Took piece of raw Jatoba flooring. Cut large section off of the with a hand saw. used a K-bar to split the back off leaving a 1/4 inch (roughly) flat face of the flooring. which I then split again into handle size pieces. (Look at the little piece leaned up against the triangle file and the bastard file)
Step 3. Use 2 part epoxy to glue the Jatoba into place one side at a time. (2 part epoxy will fill gaps well if things are not perfect) When that is dry square up the rear ends of the jatoba scales with the bastard file. I went real slow here. got to get it 90 or there will be weird gaps where it meets the horn and they will be obvious.
Step 4. Hack saw a chunk of horn off of my petco chew toy. cut it into smaller section and rasp it down so there is a flat surface. Then, square up the edge that will butt up against the Jatoba. Nothing else matters with the horn except the glue joints, Horn is about the easiest material to work with hand tools ever!
Step 5. Check for a tight square fit of horn to the Opinel handle and to the Jatoba scale. Epoxy it on one side at a time.
Step 6. Rasp to rough shape with the rough side of the ferrier's rasp, flip rasp tighten up shape with medium rasp side. file, file file, sand, sand, sand, buff with strop and compound. oil.
Step 6.5. drink a beer. Ya done good!
Hope that helps.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 1998
- Messages
- 774
I did this Opinel some years ago.
- Joined
- May 23, 2015
- Messages
- 4,161
I really like what you did with your knife. A #8 is my favorite size and I have several including a raw handle I just bought to try to modify. Thanks for telling us the process you went through on your handle. Would you mind telling us how you did the blade it looks as nice as the handle. Thanks for posting and I look forward to hearing about the blade.
3-1-1
Gold Member
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2012
- Messages
- 2,173
Not to butt in, but I think he did, see the original post: "1/2 hour vinegar dip followed by 10 minute mustard line patina"
- Joined
- May 23, 2015
- Messages
- 4,161
Thanks man I must not have read the photo captions and to tell the truth I just read it twice again and didn't see the info until the second time. Guess I'm just getting old and senile.
