- Joined
- Oct 15, 2010
- Messages
- 338
Hey everyone. My Izula II is my most used ESEE. I use it mostly for field dressing animals. I like everything about it, except the large carabiner hole. I know many if not most like it, but it's just a pinky finger trap for me. So, I decided to make my own handle with a traditional lanyard hole. I need to step back a little and mention that I have used this knife to field dress 2 pronghorn and, most recently, 2 tastey whitetail does and several upland birds and a single rabbit. I didn't take any photos of the "process" because I was up to my elbows in entrails and didn't want to set up or touch my camera. Here is the knife after the 2 whitetails. Of course it did both without any touch up on the edge.
I also boned the meat with the Izula. I cleaned it several times by soaking or running it in hot water and using regular dish soap. This is how I always clean my knives and i didn't see any reason do do any different especially after reading the recent "stop taking your handles off" thread. Jumping forward, it came time to make my new handle. I took off the scales and found this:
There was still quite a bit of blood under the scales and the adhesive used on the liner material was pulling away. I bought a piece of fiddleback bastogne walnut, liner material, loveless pins and lanyard tube off of the auction site. I don't have a belt sander but made due with what I had. Mainly a hand saw, dremel, vice, and a sanding block.
I cut out new liners to hold the wood in place and molded them to the shape of the inside of the Izula.
I could have attached these to the old scales as well and taken care of the adhesive issue.
I epoxied them in place and clamped them to the new scales
I don't know if this is how loveless pins are supposed to work, but this is how I used them.
You can see the general shape I chose for the handle. These were epoxied in place as well. I had the new scales pretty much formed by this point and finished up with some sanding and buffing with a dremmel attachment. I ended up with this.
It came out OK for my first attempt and would definitely try other things if I were to do this again. I like the wood and the feel of the new handle. It really feels like a hunting knife now. I managed to nick and scuff the coating a bit, but not as much as I thought I would with the dremel. This was good because I really wanted to keep the coating. Best of all, no more pinky trap!
Thanks for looking. Any tips would be greatly appreciated for next time. I did find several threads in the Bladesmith Q&A forum that gave me this general direction.
I also boned the meat with the Izula. I cleaned it several times by soaking or running it in hot water and using regular dish soap. This is how I always clean my knives and i didn't see any reason do do any different especially after reading the recent "stop taking your handles off" thread. Jumping forward, it came time to make my new handle. I took off the scales and found this:
There was still quite a bit of blood under the scales and the adhesive used on the liner material was pulling away. I bought a piece of fiddleback bastogne walnut, liner material, loveless pins and lanyard tube off of the auction site. I don't have a belt sander but made due with what I had. Mainly a hand saw, dremel, vice, and a sanding block.
I cut out new liners to hold the wood in place and molded them to the shape of the inside of the Izula.
I could have attached these to the old scales as well and taken care of the adhesive issue.
I epoxied them in place and clamped them to the new scales
I don't know if this is how loveless pins are supposed to work, but this is how I used them.
You can see the general shape I chose for the handle. These were epoxied in place as well. I had the new scales pretty much formed by this point and finished up with some sanding and buffing with a dremmel attachment. I ended up with this.
It came out OK for my first attempt and would definitely try other things if I were to do this again. I like the wood and the feel of the new handle. It really feels like a hunting knife now. I managed to nick and scuff the coating a bit, but not as much as I thought I would with the dremel. This was good because I really wanted to keep the coating. Best of all, no more pinky trap!
Thanks for looking. Any tips would be greatly appreciated for next time. I did find several threads in the Bladesmith Q&A forum that gave me this general direction.
