In today's post you will see the handles for the Pride and Bobcat start to come together. Between spraining my ankle and my son's birthday, I didn't make a whole lot of progress, but the headway that I did make is enough to see how these knives are going to look.
Here is where we left off last week. Most of the holes in the main parts have been spotted and the process of fitting up the bolsters and scales was started.
We begin by grinding off the steel plugs in the back sides of the buckeye burl scales so that they are flat and flush. The disk grinder is the right tool for the job. I didn't take any pics of fitting up the back bolster for the Pride knife, but it is done in much the same way as the front bolsters.
After all of the holes are spotted in the liners and other parts, threads are tapped in order to accept 0-80 screws. The through holes are tapped with my tapping head on the drill press, and the blind holes are tapped by hand.
Here we have the handle halves for both knives screwed together for the first time. The bolsters and scales are not in the same plane and will need to be ground down and the bolsters and scales all need to be profile ground down to the liners. We'll accomplish this over at the grinder.
After some time at the grinder, the handle halves are ground down and profiled. If you can imagine the look after the zirconium bolsters have been heat-colored black, I think you'll agree that these will be two handsome knives. It was about this point where my ankle was throbbing enough that I decided to call it quits. It's a minor sprain, so I should be back on my feet (literally) by next weekend. Thanks for following along with me on this knife-making adventure.
- Brandant Robinson