All right, Guys. After 12 hours in airports today, I'm back. I got several PM's with questions, I'll try and answer here. If I was a lawyer, I would write some kind of disclaimer like, "This was my first knife - use my advice at your own risk."
Question: "Shape the handle before or after gluing to the tang?" For the built up handle I did, I think you pretty much have to make the holes in the different layers - including drilling the wood or antler - first and then glue them on the tang before shaping. And you put glue on the tang and between each layer. I sanded the sheet brass before glueing. I also sanded the leather spacers I cut out of the Goodwill belt to get any polish off of the glued surfaces. Do a bunch of dry fits before gluing. Unless you are better with the drill, give yourself a little extra material to get the wood and antler pieces square to each other as you are mating the surfaces together. My belt/disc sander I got for Christmas was a real help for this. I suppose for a one piece handle you could drill the hole, shape it then glue it on.
"Do you need the brass nut?" Nope, if I knew how to work leather, may not have used the nut. The sheath I bought has a strap that pops over the nut to lock the knife in securely so I decided to use the nut. If you use the nut, it limits the length of your handle. My knife is really comfortable in my hand, but I might have liked it to be about an inch longer. If you build up the knife with several layers and don't run the tang thru and use the nut, one fellow said he glues and extra rod in the handle - I guess so end piece is less likely to snap off if you are putting some pressure on it. I'll give the address to that thread at the end.
"Did you drive the guard piece on?" The guard I bought from darktimber is made for the Helle #99 blade, so I needed to do a little file work to get it to sit the way I wanted it to on the Veidemann blade I used. I filed the guard (rather screw up a $1.50 part than a $22 blade) but you can shape the blade to get the fit you want. If you used brass stock, you'd have to drill and fit it from scratch.
"Can you use smooth-on?" Beats me! Some of the bowyers might be able to answer that better. A lot of folks said they use JBWeld but I only know the gray-looking JBWeld. I used Devcon 2-ton epoxy since it is pretty clear. The glue joint are almost invisible.
"tools?" As I said, put my belt/disc sander to a lot of good use - did the majority of the shaping with it. The rounded end of the belt sander worked great for rough shaping the hollows for my thumb and finger near the guard. Probably the best tool for shaping would be one of those narrow 1" belt sanders - but don't have one of those. Put my dremel tool to good use for fine finishing. Used primarily a small sanding drum, a conical grinder bit and a buffing wheel with polishing compound to brighten up the guard once done. One thing I did a little different is I tried to shape the handle to the antler burr. Instead of sanding the transition smooth and knocking off the pearling, I used a small grinder tip on the Dremel to shape the wood/leather/brass to match the antler as best I could. Came out pretty good. If it's a smoother part of the antler, would be easier just to sand it smooth. Also used some files for a little shaping and my 4-in-1 rasp a little. I bought a 3/16" long drill bit for about $3 to drill and rout out the tang. Try as I did, my drilling really sucked. Luckily, I had enough wood to work with. A drill press would have been nice, but note on some of the blades, the tang is angled so draw a bunch of pencil marks to make sure you know exactly where you want to drill.
"Finish" I used wipe-on poly instead of acrylic. I think the water based stuff gets milky looking when wet (bloody?). Just avoid the mistake I made and know the wood you used. The bocote is oily and it was difficult to get the poly to try.
I think I answered most of the questions. Let me know if not. Here's a good thread off the ***********:
http://***********.bowsite.com/TF/lw/thread2.cfm?forum=23&threadid=147520&messages=117&CATEGORY=9
Steve
Topic: Helle knife finished - thanks for help (Read 3486 times)
