Gary Mulkey

Here's a tip from someone who's been there: Before you start forging make a physical pattern of what you what to end up with. It can be made of anything but I recommend that it be fireproof so that you can lay your hot blade directly onto it. That way you can compare your forging to it as you proceed to keep you going in the right direction.

When you make knives for a living, occasionally you have to think commercially and not artistly.

I ended up modifying my original hilt design a little. I'm using some fossil ivory that I got from Charles Turnage while at The Central States Show. From here I will inlay some stainless escutcheons into the ivory. I think that I will grind the fossil ivory from the outside this time in order to get a more uniform white color. (I'm not knocked out with the color of these scales anyway.) You can see that I milled the inside of the pommel pieces (416). This was to help balance the knife as frame tangs tend to get heavy. They will get contoured and a little filework added. The frame tang is made of a center pieces of 416 with the two outside pieces being of nickel/silver.

They do the same thing but differently. One blocks the moisture from getting in. The other doesn't allow the wood to absorb it. Similar but different.

Something that is important in stabilized wood is that the cellulose fiber of the wood gets impregnated with the resins which then harden. Since the fibers are saturated with the resin, they can't absorb any liquids and swell which stabilizes their size.

Completed:

Ready for final glue-up. I hope you've enjoyed the journey through the creation of this one.

desert ironwood

The first dry fit-up. I think that I'll save the remainder of the handle work to do in my public shop.

You're right. They were common with the confederate soldiers.

I got all of the components except for the pommel nut roughed out and the guard bent after work today. There is still a lot of handle work to get done but it's getting there. There are a couple of minor flaws in the twisted guard but an acetylene torch will take care of that.

The guard end of the piece was turned on a lathe to get the ball tip on one end and then the rest forged flat. I then forged the end of another 1/2" round piece somewhat flat and welded both to the ends of the wheat twist. I then forged the wheat twist a little flatter and ground it shiny. ( The end used for the butt cap had to be upset in order to get the cap wide enough.)

I've got the blade (336 layer random pattern damascus) in the tempering oven and the guard rough forged. I will probably leave the guard alone now until I have the frame tang handle completed so I can custom bend the guard to fit.

With the 1/2" round bar on the back end I'm sure that I will need to upset it quite a little in order to have enough material for a proper butt cap but as long as I'm doing traditional blacksmithing techniques, why not?

I got in a little forge time after work today. This D-Guard still has a ways to go but this may give you an idea of where I'm going with it.