Finished Photos - Damascus hunter

[kbaknife]

Another hunter to send to our good buddy, Scott Teaschner, when I get it done.
Nice stag taper, stainless guard and will be takedown.

   

[Lin Rhea]

It's a beautiful thing.

[gudspelr]

^^^^^^^ What he said    


   


Jeremy

[kbaknife]

I etched the Damascus today and it is fantastic.
And I'm going to put on a twisted wrought iron guard instead of stainless.

[kbaknife]

I'm doing three knives at once right now, so it may seem progress is slow - but I'm busy!!

A couple pics of how it etched out:
Twisted wrought iron material layed out for the mill.

 


 

[just_a_hunter]

WOW!!!

Todd

[kbaknife]

The take-down assembly on this knife took me about 6 hours today.
I've often called fitting a stag handle a "dance".
It's a whole bunch of goin' 'round and 'round the shop.
And doing take-down makes me double-step the "dance".
Creating a take-down in any other knife simplifies the construction immensely. It makes things go faster and much more accurately.
On a stag handle, it makes one get in tune with Mother nature.
So, here is the twisted wrought iron guard slotted to fit the blade:

 

 

 

 


I file fit the shoulders into the stag handle:

 

Tapped into place:

 

[kbaknife]

Work on the mating of surfaces:

 


Now I create a ledge inside the butt for a 3/16 plate to sit on:

 

This helps me to get my handle and guard pinned:

 

My components minus the butt cap:

 


A little bit of work shaping the guard:

 

And this is where she will rest until the morning:

 

[tomsm44]

Very nice footwork Mr Sinatra.    :D   I imagine it can be a bit tricky to square up a piece of stag with the tang/guard when there's not a single square surface on it.  Can't wait to see the finished product.

Matt

[kbaknife]

Matt, there are plenty of opportunities to take slow, deep breaths.

[D.Ellis]

Looking real nice Karl.
Darcy  

[kbaknife]

Good morning - here we go again!
Got it all together yesterday and now all I need to do is etch the wrought iron fittings and hot-blue the blade.
Then, off to Scott for some Teaschner magic.

Here's where we are with the forward assemble created: guard is locked in tight to the shoulder and stag taper is pinned to the guard.
Temporary finial has taper bolted to knife.

 

Here's a chunk of wrought iron I gave the squish to:

 


Here I have my iron cut out and flattened.
You can also see a temporary finial with milled shoulder to pull in the assembly plate.
I'm going to turn a new finial out of that 416 rod.

 

Now, here is the "official" finial that has been threaded on one end to screw onto the tang, and threaded on the near end to receive a 6-32 finish screw:

 

This is how it looks, but what you don't see is maybe an hour of work to get the butt cap and butt of the stag "happy". It must be a full 100% form fit around the entire perimeter so not even light can pass through.
Remember - this is not getting any filler or epoxy/glue.
I have a really wide, single-cut file that I slowly drag the taper butt across maybe as many as 500 times, slowly making adjustments, making pencil marks, re-fitting, checking, double checking, again and again until it's a good as I can get it.

 


When I get it like I want it, I blacken the cap and scribe my taper:

 

[kbaknife]

Here is the scribed outline:

 


You can see I'm getting almost full contact across the butt.
At7 O'clock you can see where I'm not touching.
I had to go back to the single cut and true that up:

 

Now a quick fit check:

 

Now I punch a couple holes where pins will meet some good meat in the handle butt:

 

This creates a raised area on the cap. This is after I had cranked it down, but you can see where my marker was worn off. This transferred to the handle butt.
It is necessary to do this in stag.
On a wooden handle material, it would create a nicely impressed ring.
Stag is nearly as hard as wrought iron, so I need to make a visible "printed" circle:
 

Voila!

 

[kbaknife]

If you want to see how I drill these holes, you'll either have to come to Minnesota, or attend one of the seminars where I'm doing a demo!

 


I used roll pins on the front.
On this end I'm using some stainless dowel pins because I had to shorten them a bit.
I put them .400" into the stag and .125" into the butt cap:
I just use a feeler gauge to determine when I'm at the right depth:

 

 

Piece o' cake!!
And I'm counter bored a decorative stainless screw that I had to reduce the head of. It will get heat colored when it's all said and done.:

 

[kbaknife]

So here is where she stands until later.
The rock solid construction parts and the assembled knife.

 


 


 

[gudspelr]

Holy crap, Karl!  That's impressive before I knew all the little things that pop up and have to be addressed... You should make the photos and comments into a short flip book to have on your table. When someone asks why your knife costs what it does, you just point to the book. Incredible craftsmanship     .


Jeremy

[ymountainman]

Thanks for posting! I know it's a lot of extra work. That knife is Impressive!!

[kbaknife]

What you see here are the basics of the process.
I think I've got 200+ pictures on this one.
That's about normal.
I do copy these to a flash drive and keep a small lap top with me at all times for a slide show.

[Danny Rowan]

another beauty my friend.

[cacciatore]

I like it like all the knives of yours.