Tang hole shaping nightmare

D

DSTiamat

Joined
Feb 4, 2011
Messages
53
Hello,
I am working on my 3-th knife, and have one big problem, the shaping of the tang hole takes me more than all the other parts together. I am a beginner and have no drill press, so I try to drill parallel holes with a hand drill and then remove the excess material with a needle file and a modified saw blade (cut it with my dremmel to be as slim as possible, some kind of broach).It takes me a half a day of painstaking work to do so. I am working mostly with Lauri Blades , 3 mm drill bit (sorry I am from Europe) is a tight fit, but I cant extend the hole with the hand drill (by moving it a bit) because the 3mm drill bit breaks to easy. Could I drill with 4 mm( the bit doesnt break that easy,I can connect the holes with the hand drill, easily) or is a tight fit a must(I heard that the cured epoxy is harder than the handle material, so it should not be necessarily a tight fit. Any ideas are wellcome. I know about handle broaches, but I cant get my hands on such things, dont have the budget to buy the either, so my modified sawblade and needle files and drill bits are the only tools I got.
TY very much and excuse my english please
DST
 
I have seen broaches made from flat blade screw drivers. You may want to give that a try. Now are you talking about the guard or the handle material? You could try a chisle to remove some of the material slowly so you don split your entire handle in half.


-Xander
 
As long as the hole isn't too huge, a bit of slop is fine. Ther epoxy resin filling the hole will close any spaces. That is not an excuse for bad fitting handles, but with your equipment restrictions, I would use the 4mm bit and wiggle out the tang hole as best you can. Use a good grade 24 hour cure epoxy.
 
I'm sorry, but the phrase "tang hole" is really funny. Maybe someday I'll grow up :)
 
I have seen guys make broaching tools out of jigsaw blades, sometimes 2 or more stacked together to make a wider cut. Thats's probably the cheapest effective tool I have seen for doing this if you can't make your own broach.
 
Hand drills make the process more difficult than drill press, but there are techniques that allow you to do most of the work with the drill either way. It's a little hard to describe without diagrams, and I don't have any diagrams.

You already know about drilling multiple holes and connecting them... but the obvious hangup is HOW to connect them. Needle files and tiny saws work, but the more you can do with power tools, the faster this will go. At some level, however, you need to accept that the limitation you place on your tool set will impact the speed with which you can achieve good results.

Okay, so assuming you now have two or more primary holes you wish to connect, the next thing you can do with the drill is remove as much of the material between the holes as possible. If you try doing this by drilling straight down on those skinny "walls" the bit will skate to the left and right all the time. If you go VERY slowly (meaning the pressure with which you apply the drill, not the speed of rotation for the drill bit), you can reduce that skating, but it still occurs.

Another way to approach it is to drill at an angle instead. Assume you have two holes, A and B. Put the drill bit in hole A and angle it toward hole B, then remove the first chunk. Doing this can get you about halfway down the hole before you lose the ability to have an effective angle. Then you just drill straight down, slowly dancing the bit over the center "wall" until you've reached the desired depth.

Once all that is done the needle files will let you flatten the sides of the channel and shape the edges (if you so desire). I've gotten to when I can create almost perfectly squared edges doing this.

The broach is also very useful at expanding and shaping the channel, and you SHOULD make yourself one. I would estimate the broach I made took two hours off the time needed to make the antler handle. But as you can deduce, it still took hours to make (because I have a similar limitation of tools).

- Greg
 
I'm sure to get the terms incorrect but hopefully someone will correct me.
There is a jewelers saw available at a reasonable price. It's like a copeing saw but for metal. It will saw out the webs in short order. I was surprised at how fast it was. A file is available, I think it's called a locksmith's file or something of the like, that will be a lot (really!) faster than using needle files. I have both so I can tell you that for a fact.
Don't forget that the part of the guard or tang facing the front of the knife must be more narrow than the back. The reason is to make the part that shows look better. I have adjusted the fit with a couple hammer licks if it is too big.
Hope it helps and your English is fine.
Lynn
 
Yes, ROtoZip bits or drywall bits sound good, but I cant find one that is 1/8 and 4 inches long, any ideas?
DST
 
I made a broach that will open up a tang hole in about 20 minutes out of 1084, it looks sort of like a keyway broach, but with teeth shaped for wood. You could probably order a keyway broach from whatever your local equivalent to MSC is, hold one end in a vise and use it. Please fill out at least what country you are in in your profile, there may be one of your countrymen who can suggest an industrial supply company

-Page
 
Im German, but live in Romania, surely none of my coutrymen are around and in this shitty country i have to get everything from the net or make it myself, but i will fill out my profile.
TY
DST
 
I use this tool
It saws on the pulling motion, it works very good
spezials_geG_500x94.jpg


http://www.steigerwald-messer.de/
This is where I bought it, they have more good stuff and steel and do mailorder.
 
The problem that I always had with drilling 2 parallel holes and trying to gouge out the middle was that I could never get that last little bit of middle at the bottom of the hole even using professionally made handle broaches. If you are using wood for handles, you can always heat the end of the tang and burn it into the handle the last little bit of the ways. Just made sure that you can remove the handle block without damaging it or the blade. Also, when you are using a broach, make sure that you clean the hole out so the sawdust doesn't get packed into the bottom of the hole. Sometimes I run the drill bit back down into the slot to clean the dust out, especially when I am using a really oily or gummy wood like blackwood.
 
Another way is to use a larger diameter drill to go straight down the centre, then use the smaller drill, or a jigsaw blade, to make a couple of key-ways near the mouth of the hole to accept the tang and provide torsional resistance. The larger diameter hole is then filled with epoxy when you assemble the handle. I had been thinking about this method and saw that it was in use on commercial knives when I disassembled a 12C27 stainless leukku for a friend. In the case of the commercial knife they just filled the entire front of the handle with epoxy, so hiding the oversize hole, but if you have any kind of guard, bolster, or two piece handle, the larger hole is hidden by the tight fitting "guard".

I have never ordered from them, but I have encountered this German site that has rather a lot of very nice tools, kind of expensive, but there is an example of a type of file that might make your job faster, if not as fast as a broach and pillar drill.

http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product/704566/GlardonVallorbe-Habilis-Rasps-5-piece-set/detail.jsf

Having been in your position ref tool shortage, I feel for you.

Best of luck!

Chris
 
If you can figure out how to make sure it actually makes it through customs I can make one of my design handle broaches which solve a lot of the shortcomings of the currently available designs, but I have never exported anything so I haven't a clue how to make sure that you actually receive something you've paid for in Romania.

-Page
 
I've not successfully made a tang hole through a piece of wood, and I have a drill press. My last failure was last week.

But reading these responses has given me an idea. Briefly, Drill a large hole in the handle material and fill it with a dowel the same size as the hole except that the dowel has a section removed cutting the dowel into to pieces. Here's a diagram.
tangholedowelsolutionjpg.jpg


This would not have to be the final size for the tang. Rather it could allow you enough room to continue to remove material from the top and bottom until it fit the tang.

Remember, free advice is worth what you pay for. I've not tried this so I have no idea if it would actually work or not.

- Paul Meske, Wisconsin
 
If you have a torch, you can heat the tang and burn a nice, tight fit for the tang. Drill a hole all the way through the wood, then heat the tang to a dull red, insert the hot tang in the hole (the blade should be tightly clamped in a vise) and push gently. Keep doing this until you have reached your goal. You can then take a small file and clean out the charring on the inside of the handle. Good luck.

Dave
 
C_Claycomb said:
I have never ordered from them, but I have encountered this German site that has rather a lot of very nice tools, kind of expensive, but there is an example of a type of file that might make your job faster, if not as fast as a broach and pillar drill.

http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product/704566/GlardonVallorbe-Habilis-Rasps-5-piece-set/detail.jsf

Chris
Click to expand...

I have ordered from that site. (other stuff but the same people)
They are good people, good to do business with.
 
C_Claycomb said:
I have never ordered from them, but I have encountered this German site that has rather a lot of very nice tools, kind of expensive, but there is an example of a type of file that might make your job faster, if not as fast as a broach and pillar drill.

http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product/704566/GlardonVallorbe-Habilis-Rasps-5-piece-set/detail.jsf

Chris
Click to expand...

I have ordered from that site. (other stuff but the same people)
They are good people, good to do business with.
 
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