I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving. I sure did!
We'll just jump in and show the progress on the Virtue and Jaguar.
If you recall, we left off last time with the stainless steel disks being epoxied into the Micarta scales. In order to trim off the protruding steel, I use my surface grinder attachment with the scales fixed to a steel plate so that the magnetic chuck will hold it. I grind until everything is flat and true once again.
Here are the handle parts for both knives. The Micarta scales for the Virtue are ready to be drilled and tapped. The bone and Damasteel parts for the Jaguar have been radiused and fit together.
All of the pilot holes are drilled and tapped in the liners to accept the 0-80 screws. Here we are tapping the holes at the drill press. I love this tapmatic automatic tapper. It turns what used to take an hour or so to tap by hand into a minute or less. Worth its weight in gold.
Here are the handles all assembled. They look kind of like what Dr. Frankenstein would build. Not to worry. Once the profiles are ground in, they will look great.
Much better! The bone has been ground down flush with the bolsters on the Jaguar and both knives have been profiled to a close-to-finished shape.
Next, it's off to the mill to cut in the pockets for the caged bearings into the Virtue blade and liners.
Here is the Virtue knife with the pivot assembly in place. I didn't get any pics of building the pivot, but it's pretty straight forward.
This final photo is of the Jaguar with the pivot assembly installed. Both knives still need the spacers ground to final thickness before a final assembly and shaping can occur. We'll have to put that off to next week.
Thanks for following along with me on this build. I hope you'll check back next week.
- Brandant Robinson