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Hey all, it's been a busy winter and spring and havent got to do much in my shop. That being said i have found time in the last week to work out a blade almost all the way through and I need some help and advice. I am making a hunting knife with a hop hornbeam (ironwood) handle, being such a pale wood i am wondering if i should stain with a red hue or just a darker color. Also I cant seem to figure out how to meet the blade to my handle and if i need a guard or a bolster or just plain sand it down to an appropriate angle. I have 2 pictures just let me know if you need more. Slight disclaimer, no it has not been heat treated or have i figured out a choil or ricasso plan yet (again suggestions welcome) Thanks in advance, Logan

Alright so I for some reason remembered my copy of American Blacksmithing a few days ago while gluing on hilt components and thinking that one day I needed to start doing some low-temperature silver solder to keep everything together and get rid of little rattles instead of epoxy. There's a page (182) that I've had dogeared for some time now. It gives a recipe for "iron cement" that is "A cement made for stopping clefts or fissures of iron vessels...This will be useful for flanges or joints of pipes and doors of steam engines." It sounds like fairly tough stuff (especially the steam engines part ), but does anyone have any more familiarity with it? Could it potentially be useful for final assembly to fill in any cracks and seams and stop any potential rattles? Or is it something I should just kind of play around with a bit and see what it can do? I really am starting to hate epoxy and other plastics like that...part of me wants to move more towards this or low-temp. solder for the metal hilt components, and cutler's resin (I love this forum...) for handles.