Suggestions for 1/16" hidden tang.

CUTS LIKE A KRIS

CUTS LIKE A KRIS

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Sep 28, 2005
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I am tasked with making a wedding knife for a friend on April 20. I have taken it upon myself to try a design that was rejected by the last wedding knife recipient. It is a sushi inspired wharncliffe in 1/16" O1. I am going over a few different ideas for drilling the hidden tang, as the tang is longer than any 1/16" drill bit I can seem to find.

Here it is as it sits today:
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My options as I see them so far:
1) cut slabs off of the blue Koa and use alternating layers of the black wood and rawhide and koa to make shorter sections to drill through

2) trim the tang as short as the drill bit

3) drill out the Koa with a longer, larger diameter drill bit, hidden pin the Koa to the blackwood bolster and either coat the tang and epoxy set the hole before final glue up, or just epoxy together at once. I have never tried a hidden pin handle- I am a bit worried about precision.

4) Combine the three. Have a rawhide:blackwood:rawhide:Koa assembly (hidden pin blackwood:rawhide:Koa), and shorten the tang to however long the drill bit will fit the remaining Koa. This seems the most likely for me to try, however I would have more pieces to make mistakes with, but may save the Koa- which is the more expensive and more limited piece.

I prefer to keep the materials natural if possible which is why I chose the rawhide for the white liner. I have a "bolster" of rawhide on my personal steak knife and it has held up nicely with washing and using as a woods and kitchen knife- I just don't get it submerged for long periods.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, both in handle construction as well as any other features that may stick out to those with more experience/better eye for sushi styled knives. (I won't show the hubris of calling it a real sushi knife)

Here are a couple other hidden tang knives as a reference to what I make/mangle.
(Middle Puuko inspire knife with musk of is mine, the other two for size/inspirational comparison)
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(The etched 440C blade is the steak knife I mentioned earlier)

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Thank you for any and all opinions given.
Kris
 
If you have a guard/bolster that is fitted to the blade, drill the tang hole any size you need to. It will be filled with epoxy, and invisible, so 1/4" wouldn't matter.
 
All of the knives you've shown have bolsters. It's only the bolster that needs a 1/16" slot, the rest can be bigger holes filled with epoxy.
Personally, I like the blue koa so much, I wouldn't go for a bolster at all. I'd maybe just use a thin silver/tin/nickel spacer and do the handle in 2 halves joined by the metal spacer in the middle of the handle.
I'd also keep the halves perpendicular so the spacer matches the banding. Angles are nice, sometimes, but on your last image, you can see how there's a visual interrupt to the banding of the wood.
Or you could do a similar thing to this but with all the wood being koa (rather than the single greenheart block in a mainly purpleheart handle). I used black vulcanised fibre spacers simply because even though I used a very thin japanese pull saw to cut the blocks, there's still a slight grain mismatch which gets broken up by the spacers enough not to notice.
This would be less noticeable on the koa and the banding would help further to disguise the joins.


P1040936.jpg
 
All kinds of drill bits are available, as shown in Willie's link. That's just one source.
Mortised tangs work very well.
You could also use a bolster just sliced off the end of that nice koa. Then as Stacy says, you only need a tight fit on the thin bolster, the rest can be drilled more easily/sloppily, and the joint between the two pieces will just about disappear once it's all finished.
 
Thanks for all of the suggestions so far. I'm not comfortable (yet) with the prospect of a mortised tang as I'm not very good at straight by hand, and really don't want to mess up thus piece. I guess I was over thinking things with the hole size, but I would rather over than under think a project with as much importance as a wedding knife, and my google fu did not turn up the longer bits. I'm slapping myself for not thinking of a slab from the back as the bolster either! I have another knife to finish the handle sanding first, but will give your suggestions in mind over the next day or so. I just hope I can end up doing the Koa justice!
 
i dont know if this would work but maybe you could cut a groove in the back of the koa. slide the tang in with some epoxy then mix epoxy with the dust from sanding the koa and spread that in the lot on top of the tang.
 
or make a bolster out of koa with the pattern from front to back as koa, blackwood, rawhide, then koa for the back of the handle i'll draw up a picture right now
 
CUTS LIKE A KRIS said:
I'm slapping myself for not thinking of a slab from the back as the bolster either!
Click to expand...

I'd cut it from the front so the grain matches. Use the thinnest saw you've got.

There are all kinds of cool ways to skin this cat. Some of them are time-honored, some just sort of come to you when the day is done and you're staring at your bench with a beer in your hand :)
 
james terrio said:
I'd cut it from the front so the grain matches. Use the thinnest saw you've got.

There are all kinds of cool ways to skin this cat. Some of them are time-honored, some just sort of come to you when the day is done and you're staring at your bench with a beer in your hand :)
Click to expand...

I thought of that after posting too. Actually you just nailed why I'm having concerns- No Beer!!! I knew something was missing......
That is beer after knife making and not knife making after beer right;)
 
Oh my God, I have had some of my best "aha!" moments staring at a project with a beer in hand.
 
To followup the other threads, Chris has it right: Beer AFTER work, not work AFTER beer!!!!
 
Well I guess there was enough beer for inspiration as I got it done. Found what I believe is alloy banding that would remain visible as I hand sanded it, so I tried a dot style FeCl etch that came out pretty well IMO, of course I am too close to the project to be truly impartial. But I thought the handle turned out well- I just need to take better photos! I ended up using a 1/8" bit and just kept the top and bottom of the tang tight to the Koa. Worked very well, as I could assemble everything and hold upside down by the handle with no blade movement before glue up- a first for me. The sheath was just a quick make in case they decide to use it, their plan right now is to frame it with invitation and other things, but it was made to be used. I didn't follow the curve of the blade for the sheath as every wharncliffe shaped sheath I have made people tout the blade in wrong anyways, and if course the new wife put it in backwards! Luckily I made it wedding sharp and not fully kitchen sharp (after a bleeding bride last year). I enjoyed this build and look forward to more kitchen styled blades in the future.

Thanks for the help/suggestions all.

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Broken egg on the handle- the fates must have known she was pregnant!
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