Okay guys, because I have this unique ability to think outside the box(or inability to think within the box which has led to my 'dork' status) I thought, "hey, how I can make a helle blade look like a full tang with file work?"
Here is what I came up with.
The blade is the odell blade. I cut the ebony in half to make the scales just like a full tang knife. I used a piece of curley maple for the fake tang. I got the scales and maple to shape and actually filed the maple just like I would have a tang. Then I spray painted the sides of the maple to make the file work show up good. I glued the pieces together along with some .030 bloodwood for accents.
Everything was going perfect until it all fell apart. One of the scales slid down about 1/16 of an inch when I glued the blank up. I had even drilled pilot holes and inserted toothpicks to prevent this from happening. Now I knew I would loose the file work when I sanded the scales back even again. I only lost the first two but all the others were in good shape. I went ahead and fine sanded the top of the handle. Then I brushed a couple of light coats of diluted india ink onto the maple while procting the rest of the handle with masking tape. This toned the maple down from the light natural color it has.
Then I put two coats of thunder bird laquer sealer on the entire sanded handle. I sanded the sealer off as I always do, but on the fake tang, I didn't take it all the way to the wood. Then I took my india ink and a fountain pin and re-painted the file work. Yea, I cheated even more! I left the coat of sealer so the ink wouldn't run on the maple.
All in all, I think the knife looks really neat for a dummy with very limited experience with file work. I added the brass pins to give the look a of a full tang knife. Here are some side views. Thanks for looking, Mike
Topic: 'faux' file work (Read 1532 times)
