Pen-knife with stacked leather handle

P

Pan Tau

Joined
Sep 3, 2002
Messages
750
Well, sometime ago I asked how to make it and got great responses from Ferrous and others. Three days ago (holidays :) ) I decided to start and it is easier than I thougt. I took some pictures during the making, they will be developed thursday and I will post links to my photo-page (cannot upload pictures from there to Bladeforums - maybe anyone else can post them for me?).
The old handle was less than 4 inches long and therefore too small for me. There was quite some cho-creep (or a large ricasso...) and I disassembled the whole knife with the help of a file and some boiling water.

Then I filed down the ricasso until I reached the end of the cho, made a fitting guard from thick brass and began to stamp out round leather discs with fitting slots for the tang. (remember to give them numbers...)

I formed the first disc to look like the guard and then took a pen and drew the shadow of the ready disc 1 on the still round disc 2, made it a little bit larger and cut it out and so using the ready discs as a matrix for the next (and making them slightliy bigger or smaller) I formed a handle with swells in the right places. I stuck them onto the tang and glued them together. After five discs I took two vises and pressed the discs and the guard together until the glue was dry. Finally I set on the buttcap and hammered onto the end of the tang until it mushroomed and secured the cap. Then I took some rough sandpaper and smoothed the leather grip, correcting the shape where necessary. In the end I waxed the grip with a larger amount of sno-seal shoe-wax and it is large enough, very comfortable and lighter than the old horn grip - so thepoint of balance is still half an inch before the guard.
I ran out of films so the ready product can be seen (more or less) as a scan here:
pic
pic 2

as said above - pics of the work in progress follow thursday or friday.

Thanks again for the great advice!

Andreas
 
Seriously that handle looks so nice. To me that is the absolute perfect survival tool. Does it have a sheath yet?

Excellent work!
 
Gans gut!

I knew the stacked leather handle would be awesome on a khuk. Can't wait to see the finished pix as well. The wax-impregnated leather is about indestructible, really shock-resistant (ie, no more handle chips or cracks if dropped), waterproof, grippy, etc, etc...

Glad someone did this, because I thought most of ye thot I was mad when I suggested it.

The stacked leather works well also for longish-handled Euro swords (hand-and-a-half & greatsword handles with 10+inches of handle). When in use, a long euro sword's tang flexes quite a bit when making contact on a strike, which can split a less flexible wood handle. No worries with the stacked leather, tho!

Keith
 
Bri in Chi,
I used clear Pattex (do not know if available in the US - a glue you have to bring onto both surfaces, let it dry a bit and then press them together - the amount of pressure decides about the strengh of the bond). For the guard I used arrow fleching cement because it is tough but it is a bit flexible too - so it would not loosen while working hard.
The handle is very comfortable, has a lot of grip and feels warm. I used 3,7 cm (about 1.5 inch) diameter stamp-irons for the leather discs which is sufficient but with a larger diameter and a belt-sander (I did everything by hand - only power tool I used was a drilling machine to put the slot into the brass-guard) the grip would maybe turn out nicer.
One little problem is that the tang gets smaller to the end of the knife - so I placed only a smaller swell behind the place where my little finger would be. I wonder if I should have made the last three discs and the buttcap larger to keep the "bell" we know from khukuries - but then the risc of an unstable grip on the last half inch might occur because the tang there is tiny and round but the leather disc would be larger (whereas the tang is enormous and thick the rest of the way to the blade - absolutely no risc of torque there).

Photos will be ready tomorrow in the early afternoon - I will scan them and load them up on my linked photo page - or mail them to one of you if he/she has a page or a membership that allows to show own photos on the forums.

Bye and thanks,

Andreas

(btw. ferrous: gans = goose ; ganz = very, quite - but you gave me an idea what to make for supper this weekend - we have guests ;o)
 
Nice job, I like it! That took skill and patience.

The PenKnife has a lot of potential for cool projects.
 
Clear Pattex = Contact Cement! Would never have thunk it! Thanks Andreas.:D
 
Very nicely done! I've often pondered making my own leather disc grip, but I figured it would turn out to be a bit of a disappointment homemade...you've made me reconsider! I love the beautiful horn handles on most of my khuks, but they are cold and slippery. I slip a piece of bicycle innertube around the grips on my carry knives, but that's hardly an elegant solution.
 
bismark, the slippery part can be improved by sanding the handles. They won't be as pretty, but they'll grip better.
 
Well, I like 'em shined up and pretty most of the time. That's why I go with the inner tube when I'm out in the woods. I have one Khuk (a khukuri house model I bought in Thamel) with a matte sanded horn handle. I think I prefer wood in that finish.
 
Andreas? It's time to post the pictures. You promised.


(nice work...VERY nice work.)


Kis
 
Well, now the pics - not all of them were developed, the ones I mad in the cellar (where I stamped out the leather discs) were too dark.

1. The original Pen-knife. note the very short grip and the large ricasso ("cho-creep")
Original Pen-knife

2. I put it in a vise (in the living room :rolleyes: ) and filed down the peened "mushroom" at the end:
disassembling 1

Then I put it 10 minutes into boiling water. The laha went soft quite fast and bubbled out from under the bolster (btw - the water went RED):
disassembling 2

and there it was disassembled (and the tang cleaned):
disassembled

3. I filed the blade between tang and cho down to prolong the tang (no pic)

4. Then I filed and drilled the guard out of thick brass, stamped out leather discs (3.7 cm = 1.5 inches) in diameter and made fitting slots into them (a bit smaller than the tang so they would fit tight) (sorry - no pic it was too dark). The result can be seen here: The discs are round and numbered, the slots get smaller towards the end of the tang, the new guard is above the blade, the tang now starts where the cho was:
before reassembling

5. I took the guard and used it as a matrix for the first disc - then cut the form out and put the guard onto the tang (did not jet glue it to the blade/tang). Then took the cutout disc as a matrix for the next disc (made it a little larger un the upper part and at the sides but let it where my index-finger should later find a groove - after six discs this groove was done and I produced a swell in the handle by making the discs first larger, then smaller (groove for the small finger) and again larger (small swell behind the hand to give a secure grip while chopping).
After five discs glued together with contact cement I pressed the discs and the guard together with two vises and let it dry for ten minutes: the pic shows the blade and the vises, the negative of an outcut disc, the drawn on form-to-be on another and an untreated disc. The buttcap you can see on the photo was not used - I made a second which is bigger
in the vise

That is when my camera started to rewind the film (no digital camera and 36-picture films are an evil thing - on the first part there were still pics of our last vacation...) - so there are no pics of
6. peening on the buttcap,
7. sanding down the grip with sandpaper (its a real mess of fine dust!) and
8. waxing the grip with sno seal shoe-wax
but I think you get the idea without pics.
The result is here (same link as in my first post - just a scan, not a photo)
finished

oh - and when I cleant (cleaned - is it an irregular verb :confused: ?) up the blade I gave it a satin-finish and convexed it :)

one can see I sanded down a little bit too much on the back of the middle section to make it "perfect" - but nevertheless the grip is very comfortable and stable. -
again thank you for the great advice!

Andreas
 
To me that is the absolute perfect survival tool. Does it have a sheath yet?
Click to expand...

yes, John, I see it that way too. short and light enough to carry anywhere, straight enough to stab (because of this I wanted a guard - which is not required on the other khuks), heavy enough to chop, enough belly to skin, broad enough to dig if necessary. Only work that needed a fine point/tip would be difficult.

no, it does not have a sheath yet - we will see if I can make one during the rest of my holidays.

I admit it felt a bit bad to make Bura´s signature on the ricasso disappear - but then I thought the kamis did not want to sign their knives - and at least I know mine is made by Bura...

Andreas
 
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