Through Tang Question

U

unky_gumbi

Joined
Aug 28, 2009
Messages
7,951
I am getting ready to make a couple of through tang Bowies. I have everything drawn out and laid out on the steel, but I am second guessing my tang thickness. The way I have it now the blade is 7.25" long and 1.35" at its thickest point. The tang is .5" at its thickest point and gradually tapers down to .3" at the end.

Should I put a little more meat in the tang closer to the blade, or is it fine how it is? The steel is 3/16" O-1 if that makes any difference. Ignore the extra lines near the ricasso, they were just there for measurements and scaling for the printer.

bowie.jpg


Thanks for any input, I hope to get these cut out tomorrow afternoon.
 
If it were me, I'd think it wouldn't hurt to have a little bid more height to the tang near the ricasso. As it is, you you've got plenty of shoulder, and plenty of room to add a little more meat to the tang.

--nathan
 
Depends on the handle material that you are using I think. The less dense and strong it is (and as such, the easier it is to hollow out) the bigger i would make the front end of the tang. I don't worry quite as much when using dense stag as I do with say maple. If you do a morticed handle, you can go pretty darne wide. Also remember that while we tend to go with as beefy of a tang as we can get away with, for centuries hidden tang knives and swords have had some pretty skinny and sometimes short tangs and they have done okay.
 
If the tang is .50" at the shoulders, it is more than strong enough.

What I will suggest is making the tang at least 1" longer than needed. The extra helpful while fitting things up, and threading the tang for a nut. Once assembled the final time, the excess can be cut off.
 
01 air hardens if heated to any degree of red, so bear that in mind if you are going to thread, or peen the end of the tang. When doing a through tang, I cut the the blade tang short, then add mild steel for the extra length with a lap joint, and 1 or 2 pins, and a silver brazed joint. If threads are needed, I just add threaded rod.
 
I don't have access to any sort of welding material any more since my move so I can't add the mild steel like you suggest. I have done the keyhole and threaded rod before though and may have to do that again.

I beefed up the tang near the blade a bit, they all measure between .65" and .7" in the first 2.5"-3" of the tang. After getting them cut out they looked much thicker in steel than they did on paper so I may have been fine with the .5" I originally had, but its better to error on the thick side than on the thin side.

I as I mentioned, I got them cut out and rough profiled today, tomorrow I am squaring up the shoulders and rounding out the choil area, then its time to layout my grind lines and get to work beveling. I still need to decide exactly what I am going to do in the way of guards, pommels and handles. the blade shape is basically the same on all three, but I want to make each one different in its hardware and handles. It will all come to me as I move forward with them, boy does it feel good to be grinding again:D
 
So Today I started squaring up the shoulders thinking I could just file down evenly to the line:o After finding out just how bad my eye was I got to looking at the scrap pieces of PG O-1 I had laying around from cutting out the 3 blanks and decided to make a file stop out of a couple of edge pieces. Knowing that I would just file through the scraps I decided to harden them after drilling and tapping them I heated and quenched. It may not be pretty but I made my first handy tool, look out Nick Wheeler here I come:p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top