I managed to make some more headway on the the two knives that I'm currently working on. I got the parts cut out and profiled, liners laid out and holes spotted, and managed to get a good start on fitting bolsters and scales. Here are some pics to show the current progress.
Here is a collections of the raw materials that will somehow become a couple of beautiful, handmade knives. In the pic above we have zirconium for bolsters and a pocket clip, titanium for liners and another pocket clip, 416 stainless for one spacer and Damascus for the other, and some stabilized California buckeye burl and lightning strike carbon fiber for scales.
Here is a pile of parts cut out and rough profiled.
Using my paper patterns, I center punch the liners where holes will need to be drilled. Here we are at the drill press making pilot holes through one of the liners. Once one liner is drilled, the other is clamped to it and the holes are transferred. This way, the holes are in the exact location on both liners.
I didn't take pics of a lot of the build steps, but at this point, the front bolsters on both knives have been fit to the liners. In this photo I have the two Bobcat bolsters pinned together and I'm truing up the back ends where they will mate up with the scales. After these bolsters have been trued up so that they are exactly the same, I will grind in a 30 degree bevel on the back sides in order to create a dovetail fit with the scales.
The Pride knife gets the buckeye burl scales, and aren't they just beautiful? But, there is one challenge that we need to overcome. This knife also gets hidden hardware. Since 0-80 screws just won't hold in wood, we have to come up with a creative solution. The method that I came up with a few knives ago when I started using hidden screws is to recess a couple of stainless steel plugs into the back sides of the scales. Here we are at the mill counterboring 1/4 inch holes to accept the stainless discs. These discs will only go about halfway through the scales, so they will never be seen in the finished knife, but will allow me to drill and tap threads into them, giving the screws something to hold on to.
With the counterbores drilled into the scales, the stainless plugs are epoxied into the holes. They sit slightly proud of the scales at this point, but once the epoxy is cured, they will be ground flat to the scales.
This final pic of the day shows all of the parts in their current state. There was a lot of drilling, grinding, and surfacing to get to this point. It's still difficult to see two finished knives in this pile of stuff, but hopefully that will change very soon. Next week I hope to get the handles fully assembled, the spacers ground to proper thickness, and the pivot assemblies put together. Maybe I'll even get started on shaping the handle too. Thanks for following along.
- Brandant Robinson