Joshua States

Bummer Gary. I hate when that happens. That's primarily the reason why I do not even fit a guard onto a knife until it is at 400 grit hand sanded.

That is one heck of great forging Sir. The whole thing is pretty impressive.

Now insert the pins and cut them off flush with the front spacer, or a little less so they do not interfere with the fit against the guard. You have now installed blind alignment pins. Now to shape the handle, I do this off the knife. I will soon demonstrate how this is done.

Stage 2. You can now remove the spacer package as a complete unit and drill your pin holes. I typically use 1/16" pins, but 3/32" pins will also work. I cannot get 1/16" drill bits into my drill press, but my mini-mill can do 1/16" drill bits. It also drill much truer than my drill press. I generally drill through the back spacer to the front. I'll explain why later. Sometimes the superglue breaks during the drilling and you do not complete the holes. If this happens, put everything back on the tang and insert the pin or pins as far as you can, and glue them together again. I Take the spacer package apart and clean the glue off. First scraping with a razor blade and then lightly sanding with 320 grit. Now I put everything back on the tang with the pins in place. This makes sure that you have good pin alignment. Recheck the spacers for tight fit and get the spacers package superglued together again. Same as earlier. Now remove the pins and insert the tang into the handle material. As with the spacer package, this should be a tight flush fit that no light shows through. Glue the last spacer to the handle material at the joint. Now remove the blade and guard. The spacer package is held to the handle material and will work as a guide for you to drill the holes into the handle. These do not have to be too deep. I typically set them less than 1/8" into the handle.

Well, Chris got me thinking about doing a little demo of installing blind alignment pins. That Kyle Royer video does a good job showing how you do it with a single spacer (and make it look lie it's multiple spacers), but I like using multiple spacers of different materials and thicknesses. I think it just looks better, and gives me more to embellish. So I came home and shot some pics of the process. As is well established in other posts, I am a 3-element kind of guy. I like using 3 spacers, and I like to match the length of the ricasso to the thickness of the spacer package. It looks "balanced" on opposite sides of the guard that way. The first step is to get the guard and spacers mounted on the tang. At least one of them should be a snug fit with very little or no movement. I generally press set the first spacer that goes against the guard. The other two are close or snug. None of them should be so tight that you have to hammer them off. Stack everything up and get it so the spacers are smooth flush and there are no gaps between them. Hold it up to a bright light and look through from side to side and top to bottom. No light should be visible between any of the fittings. By this point, you should have each of these pieces "tagged" to tell you which one goes on in what order and what orientation. I like to number the upper right corner of the back side (away from the blade) with an up arrow. Lin Rhea uses a center punch and puts a different number of dimples just above the tang slot. Whatever you do, tag each piece so you can always put them back on in the correct orientation. With a 3-piece spacer, it's not too difficult to figure it out without the tags, but when you do a 6 piece spacer...... With everything together, squeeze the package tight and appliy a couple of drops of superglue to the seams between the spacers. Do NOT glue the front spacer to the guard. The guard should be so tight that you need to whack the tang to remove it. This will instantly break the superglue bond.

In that Kyle Royer video, he shows how to do the blind pins in the spacer. He creates the spacer around 7 minutes in, and does the alignment pins at 11:20. He also uses blind pins for the buttcap, (14:30) but he doesn't show how he indexes them to the handle.

I probably should have clarified that somewhere. With the exception of the full tang knife, all of these knives have blind pins to align the guard/spacers/handle.

+1 @Austin_Lyles I did some more work on my Tale of Six Blades WIP and a little forge welding on that twisted 4-way bar. After cutting it in half, I re-welded it back together with the insides out. What started as a roughly 10" long, 7/8" square bar, is now 14 " long and 5/16" thick.

Just a little bit of progress today. I have to tell you that the dagger has been taken off the bench for a long while. It will take more time than I have to devote to it right now. I did make another W2 blade. It will be an EDC take-down. I just realized that I failed to take any photos of the forging or HT process, which is a shame. Anyway, I drew down the tang and took that to 320 grit today. Then I took that big camp knife, fitted a new guard to it (third try is the charm I guess), Drilled the blind pins for the spacer package and got it indexed to the Amboyna block. (I drilled and fit the block to the tang Sunday) I also sanded the blade to 600 grit on the disc and it's ready for handle shaping.

I'm not opposed to stock removal. Sometimes it makes a lot more sense than forging anyway. I was wondering about a San-Mai application between two pieces of PW.

I think that came out great looking. I wouldn't worry about that spot by the edge. The steel will still get plenty sharp. Where do you get that 26c3?

I was wondering where this project was. Congrats on the newfound occupation. Sounds like the Force is strong with you...….or at least taking an interest in your endeavor! As for land searching, are you still set on the northeast? Other parts of the country may have the land at better pricing than you will find there.

What's funny is today I had to take a curved tang and straighten it out. I did basically the same thing, except no wet rag and I used the oxy-acetylene torch.

This is important. This is the deal. This is what I love about Gary's work.

Awesome! This is looking great Adam. What's the wood? No worries about the tang mods. I deliberately left more mass there than I would normally, just in case you had to. Did you weld/solder that little bit on, or reforge the end out?

I'm a little late to the party, but there is also this video.

As Chris already knows, my vote is the first one. I like the way it relates to the point of the bird beak. Sitting on the line that bisects the point (or close enough). A little further back would be more on the line and the space between the front pin and the edge would match the space between the rear pin and the edge. Visual balance. Odd numbers of elements are generally more attractive. It's a Greek/architectural thing. It visually establishes the center.

Excellent! BTW- both you and Conner should remember to bring your latest work with you to get feedback and critique from the teachers and more experienced folks. Getting advice from fellow forumites looking at photos is one thing. Putting the work in the hand of a Bladesmith is a whole new world. Don't be shy about it either. Hammer-ins are where you will start to build your network. Just wait until the break and ask if they would be willing to look at your work and provide feedback.

Sounds like a date. Maybe a chaperone would be in order...... Seriously though, both of you should be fine. These are not drunken frat parties. These are typically serious events about the art and how it is taught to students. The instructors that participate have reputations to maintain (and sometimes grow).

I already told you what I think, now for the questions. What are the black bits and how are they held on? What are the stats? (sizes, dimensions, etc.)

Pretty much that's it. First, get the flats of the ricasso area smooth and parallel. No ricasso? Create a small one that you remove later. Measure this thickness with the calipers. Set the calipers for roughly half that thickness and lock them. I usually set them about .002 one side or the other from center. This produces two lines and leaves about .004" between them to grind to. I set one square tube (leave the other one out) and scribe the center line with one side on the steel angle. Start at the ricasso and move to the tip. Remove that pin, set the other one, flip the blade over and scribe from the other side. BTW - the angle iron is only 7.25" long, but you can make it any length you like.

There is also this:

One big difference between these home made ones and the actual height gauge in the video, is the use with a forged blade versus a piece of flat stock. When you are starting with a piece of flat stock, profiled to shape, but no bevels yet, the simple small variety works fine. It's when you have already forged in your bevels and the distal taper, that the small center scribes fall short (no pun intended), as you move through the point. With the larger height gauge variety, the blade is laid flat on a smooth surface, like a granite slab, and it does not fluctuate in reference to the tip of the gauge. With the smaller tools, as you move away from the ricasso area, you have less and less flat surface on the knife to rest on the flat of the tool. This is why I put mine on a piece of steel angle that is about 8 inches long and have a scribe at each end for doing both sides.

I am fundamentally a lazy man. The most effort I spend on anything is trying to figure out the easiest way to get it done. Sometimes that involves making or buying a tool, but it is never my first option. The tooling is always a last resort, and probably a bad way to go about it, because I often waste time and money creating scrap.........