Alex Middleton

Sounds good. I have a couple projects to finish up before I get to involved with this one. Thanks again for the help!

I tried annealing a few blades that way, and had nothing but problems afterwards. I forget the chemistry of it, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but in certain types of steel it causes carbides to clump together and form super hard spots scattered throughout the blade. I was burning through a ton of drill bits as I was trying to drill pin holes. Based on the advice I was given here, now I just normalize the blade before doing any grinding/drilling and I haven't had any issues since.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. That gives me a good place to start from. Gerald, just to clarify, you're talking 1 part linseed oil to 4 parts lacquer thinner to start and then ending with 4 parts oil to 1 part thinner, correct? I'm thinking that the interim steps would probably be in the range of 1/2 and then 2/1. It didn't come out in the pics very well, but there appears to be a heavy topcoat of varnish or lacquer applied to the stacked part of the handle. It seems like I would need to remove this before a soaking would do much good, but with that concentration of thinner to start with, maybe it will dissolve it without needing to sand it first. Thoughts?

A good friend of mine asked for my help with restoring a pukkoish knife that was handed down to him by his father. My assumption is that it is a stacked birch bark handle. There's some pretty obvious sunfading on one side of the handle, he said it got left in a window for a long period of time. My plan is to lightly sand the entire handle and recoat it with clear lacquer. I've never worked with this type of handle before. Is there any thi.g I should be see aware of before I start working on it?

I'll triple your money! Lol. Plus I'll pick it up and bring beer with me!

The good thing is that liquid steel moves really easily under the hammer!

Excellent advice above. I'll add that sometimes I'll predrill my series of holes with a smaller drill bit first and then drill them again with the right size bit. You can then drill them closer together and overlap them without your bit "walking" into to the hole next to it. Its toigh on drill bits, but with a little practice it works pretty well. Follow it up with needle files to shape and youre good to go.

Personally, if you're just talking about making knives, I'd skip the chop saw (for now) and use the money for your angle grinder and/or belt sander. If you need it for other purposes then that's a different story.

I like it Zeb. Looks pretty "magical" to me.

Love it!

Beautiful knife! Out of curiosity, what is the difference, other than the name, between an Irish Skean and a Scottish Dirk? Both seem to have roughly the same profile and handle shape.

Mainly to reduce weight and to provide an area for the epoxy to bond all three pieces together at once. It'll almost function as a hidden pin in the handle. Loving this WIP by the way. Its cool to see different methods that people use to accomplish the same results. Keep it going!

I finished up the handlework on the "little brother" this afternoon. I took this pic right after I wiped on the first coat of BLO. Other than a small gap at the top of the blade/guard junction, it turned out pretty well.

Good to hear that there's no critical injuries. I'm assuming that he lives near you. Are they sending him down to Grand Rapids for rehab? The wizards at Mary Freebed are world class.

LOL! Even if she doesn't get it right away, she'll figure that somethings up when she looks at the bank statement. I'm sure that the kids will give it away after about 5 seconds anyway. Just to be safe, maybe I should round off the sharp corners a little bit!