Knife #1 - day2 - Shot!

I expect to have problems, I'd I know I'm prone to cutting corners and rushing things. Today's effort was textbook screwup. Couldn't quite get the wood scales to match the inside radii in the brass. the first picture shows how many attempts before I got a pair to almost work. The second picture shows how gnarly the bottom the bottom turned out. Bailout time. I'm going to just start over. The crack in the brass is too sloppy even for me. The blank is still almost untouched which is what's making this so difficult. All my practice knives were just slabbed oversize and sanded to match the steel. I'm finding it much harder to disassemble, sand, and reassemble repeatedly, but I'm finding shortcuts like making one fat slab to fit and then carefully sawing in half to make two matching pieces, and drilling from the good side to have any splintering show on the bad side. Now that I know I don't have any junk I can use, I'm going to go as basic as I can. A well made simple knife is better than a crappy fancy one.
I like well made and fancy, like the kind I could buy from Charlton right now, but then what would I blog about? At least I appreciate why they're expensive; this ain't like making wallets at summer camp.

After Sanding

Top photo shows mock-up after sanding brass on a belt sander with #260 grit. As feared it's a little small, but I can still make the back of the knife correct. The front bolsters came out pretty well off the roller, but I can't get into the finger groove to sand. Will try manually. I'm pretty pleased, except for the bottom issues. The lesson is, don't cut any corners. If something almost works, don't use it, but I'm disregarding it in this case, so that if I'm wrong I get to kick myself twice. Besides, until I glue it, I can pretty easily disassemble and start over. On the other hand. that was a lot of work. On the other, other hand, I could use the practice.

After Fine Grinding

I have the brass about right; slightly larger than the tang. Ideally, after sanding, it'll be perfect on top and especially the front, where I'm trying to match the arc of the blade relief.

Blade with Slabs in Place

This was the first mock-up to check if it would work at all. The brass doesn't quite reach on the bottom, but I'm putting wood over that and hoping it will look okay with epoxy in the gap, which will be a flaw, but maybe not too bad, I'm going to concentrate on making the the top, front and rear correct and leave all the ugly underneath. I already nicked the steel there, before I realized if I didn't want to scratch the damascus I need to dissasemle, reassemble, and check repeatly. It turned out to be around twenty times. Radii are difficult on a grinder.

Blade #1, day 2

This is the two sides pinned together with 1/8" drill bits. This keeps them aligned while I drill out the three larger holes, two of which will be used to clamp them together for rough grinding. The two on the left will be removed and the one on the right is a slight problem. To use those I need to drill through the blank, and it turns out that damascus is as hard as it's supposed to be. My first two exploratory borings with a 1/8" bit left an almost unperceptible dimple. Not good. I made the mistake of trying to drill about a 1/2" hole in a piece of stainless and literally trashed every small bit I had, The larger holes are punched in the blank, I may be able to drill it and pin it w/ brass if I buy a couple of expensive bits. If not, I think it will strong enough with pins, rivits and glue.

Bowie - Spit and Polish

Actually wd-40 and 1000 grit paper. This was just to remove any surface rust or dirt, which was negligible, and bring out the contrast. I coated it lightly with gun grease, because I couldn't find any hard wax. I don't know if these photos are much good - just trying to show off the grain really. Tomorrow I polish whichever blank I'm going to use and grind the scales to roughly match the handle, but now I'm thinking I might not grind the excess off the thick part of the slabs on the front to make a thumb guard. If I just partially temporarily pin it together, I should be able to tell if it will work looks-wise or whether the open gaps will look bogus. Improvising...

Inside View of Scales

This shows the other side. Hopefully you can see where I have to remove brass to match the blank. There are a couple places where the finger notches don't quite reach, that might or might not cause appearance problems later. I try to move the scales around where the existing holes will line up. I want two pairs pins through the thick and thin parts, with a wood insert. My aim is for it to be strong without epoxy, as they would have for thousands of years before epoxy was invented, although I am going to glue it, too.

I don't know which blank I'm going to use yet, although if I had another pair of slabs I'd use them on both. They don't quite fit either, but I think they'll work. It's most likely that I will destroy them with the grinder, but I'm going to try and at least start carefully. For a change.