Cow bone works fine for bolsters and other parts. Just be sure its good and dry.
Turns out I can't find the cow bone I was planning on use, and the deer bones I buried in the backyard to (going to try my hand at a traditional flint knapped piece held together with sinew) needs another year or so. So this one will be just wood.
Nce project. On your next one, make the tang hole before glueing the pieces of wood together. That way you don't have to go so deep
This has me thinking... I was thinking of doing stacked pices of walnut heart and sap wood on the next knife, drilling before gluing up a block sounds like a good idea.
Making sure the end of the tang is annealed is great advice, just heat it to a very dull red with a torch and let it cool once of twice and that should be good enough. I would also say that you should try to fit the end/butt cap to the shape of the tang, just use a square or rectangular needle file to finish shaping the pre-drilled hole. Also, when peening use many light hits with a fairly light weight ball peen to make sure that you're only upsetting/mushrooming the very end of the tang, which should also make it easier to tell when it's done before accidentally going too far and potentially cracking the handle.
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If you're going to do a mortised tang (i.e. not a solid block for the handle) I probably wouldn't do a through tang, just a normal hidden tang. The tang looks like relatively small so it should be pretty easy to get it fit into the handle, especially since you plan on doing a through tang and can access the tang hole from both ends.
Yeah, you're the second person to say I need to make sure the end is dead soft. I would hit it with the torch but I think I've decided to do a mortised tang for this one and stacked layers of wood and a peened end on the next one. I'm familiar with peening stuff over from cold riveting stuff before (I don't remember when or for what, but I do remember the first time I was able to successfully dress a proper looking cold rivet).
You mentioned you aren't much of a woodworker. Bradpoint bits have a different tip on them than common twist bits made for metal. They will cut wood much more efficiently and track better. (easier to keep straight).
Awesome info, I didn't know what a bradpoint was. I'm not much of a wood worker, but I enjoy it, and I've done a fair bit. My joinery is terrible, my artistic skills sub par, but I've built a plywood boat, a few tables, and fixed the occasional shotgun stock. This is just another step in the journey of learning.
Fwiw. I just drill once thru, then finish up with one of those round carbide grit hacksaw blades.
It cuts plenty fast and as mentioned with epoxy, you dont have to be highly accurate.
Said that, I seldom use full block for those handles. Its been years actually.
Nowdays, always stacked layers.
Yeah, after reading all these this morning I've decided that on this knife I'll just do a mortised tang. I've inlet stuff before and that seems like an easy and convenient way to finish off this knife without having to worry about drill bits flexing, holes not quite lining up, and managing to hold my hand drill at an appropriate angle in 3 space and figuring out how to hog out material in the middle. I hadn't heard about round carbide hacksaw blades before, that's interesting and certainly seems like it'd make it easy to clean up the hole. I don't currently have any tools for broaching and no small files; I was going to make a broach following some instructions I saw (I think on here). For the leuku blade I think I'll make a stacked handle from 4 or 5 pieces of wood making it quite a bit easier to drill as pointed out earlier. From there I can just stack, epoxy, rivet, and shape; all while understanding that the pieces don't need to be precisely fitted on the tang. I have a third blade I can try my luck on with drilling all the way through a big block, it was destined for my brother in law, we'll just make it a short 'family project'.
This has certainly been a learning experience, thanks again, all the help and wisdom available here has been a real boon to my actually getting this done.
