WIP - Western Rehandle(s)

I'm going to show the process of how I rehandle western knives. The mules are Hiromoto AS knives - a gyuto & a santoku. The gyuto will be getting a hidden tang conversion, the santoku will receive full tang scales.


First we see the knives laid out along with all of the materials required. The wood has been cut down to size, squared up, and the scales (for the santoku) have been cut as well as have their G10 liners glued up.




(The wood isn't really called "baconwood" - the owner dubbed it this name as it reminds her of bacon)



From here I took the knives to the grinder and thinned the blades. I didn't take pictures of this because they pretty much look the same, just shinier as they're all polished up ready for the etching tank.


The blades are then wrapped in protective tape and then the scales were removed from the handles. Again no pictures, I should have taken some here though. The procedure is to grind the heads of the rivets off and then punch them out - scales fall off.


The holes in the tangs were drilled out to a larger size to accommodate the pins I use. In case you're wondering why I need to drill the holes out, the Japanese use rivets with large heads yet tiny shafts so the factory pin holes are very small. The tangs are hardened and require a carbide drill bit to cut through them.






Here you'll see the knives laid out at the point ready to have the wood attached. I have some more fitting to still do to ensure a clean fit up but otherwise the next step will be mounting the wood.



You'll notice that the gyuto's tang has been ground down to make the hidden tang conversion. The owner requested a hidden tang handle on this knife because she wants to show the maximum amount of "baconwood"as possible.
:bacon



Here I'm drilling the pin holes for the santoku. I bring the whole assembly (knife included) to the drill press to drill my pin holes. I've found over time that if I do it this way I can make one pass through both scales and get perfect alignment without having to run the risk of over-sizing the holes from drilling the second scale as is more commonly done. *Note - Doing the drilling like this works great for tapered tangs - perfect fit every time.

I finish the holes by using a reamer (shown in the picture) to get the perfect size for a (hopefully) perfect fit.






I then cut out the shape (pattern) for the scales.






Here are the santoku scales with pins inserted part way, ready for glue up.






I then moved onto drilling out the tang hole in the "baconwood" block.






Then onto the fun part - burning in the tang!

The process starts out by heating the tang's tip to orange color (very hot).






Then I push it on home, sometimes we get flames.





Also lots of smoke too. Good thing I have a dust collector set up below sucking the smoke out of the shop.






Then finally I drilled the single pin hole that this handle will have.





Now for mounting & gluing.....


..

 

Really nice WIP. I can't wait to see what these two look like once finished!

- Steve

 

Cool, thanks! So far, maybe even I could do this I look forward to seeing the rest. It's the shaping I feel least confident about, probably because i still don't know what style I really like best myself.

Stefan

 

This stuff is down right entertaining

 

It's funny how we both use the same marking system to orient the scales(Letter plus arrows) I figured out that one of the arrows is 100% redundant... only took me over a year to realize this.

 

LOL, I figured that out after a year or so too BUT I keep doing it out of habit....how stupid is that?!

 

I'm going to attempt to do some photoing of the shaping process, we'll see how that goes.

 

So for today's work....


I managed to get the wood mounted and epoxied up last night. Here are the knives after glue up, clamps removed.






Here I cut the gyuto handle profile from the baconwood block.






The wood is ready for shaping.






Rough shaping the wood into the form of a handle. This is the pucker part.





Both handles are rough shaped using a 36x grit belt followed by an 80x belt which you see in the pictures above. I grind the bolsters at the same time to get a flush fit.


I then go through a series of belts up to 220x.




Now to shape the curl (sometimes referred to as the bird's beak) section of the handle. Since I don't have a nice small wheel attachment for my belt grinder I have to use little drum sander spindles in the drill press.





Here is what I'm looking to achieve.









I then use sandpaper strips to (shoeshone) shape the curl (bird's beak) into a comfortable grip. This step is important since the wrap around fingers land here.




Here is what I'm after.







Now back to the grinder for some refinement, I take each handle up through to 400x. The handles are now ready for hand sanding & oiling.







The handles have been wet sanded with both fine sandpapers and then with very fine steel wool.







Now it's time to start sealing the wood through oiling. I will start this process today continuing for at least another day, maybe two, until I get just the right level of finish I'm looking for. Once that's complete I can unwrap the blades and it's time to etch. See you then.....

 

Bacon for the win! I suspect Connie is going to be very happy. Really great to see these WIP Dave.

 

Thanks for putting the extra work in with the photos. It makes getting a semi-custom knife experience even more exciting!

 

Those look awesome Dave! Thanks for sharing these!

 

hand sand and oil to finish ???, quicker to just fry it in a pan no ?


looks great Dave, Connie is probably going to do cartwheels when she sees them

 

I love how both of these are coming out! The depth of the curl on the Bacon Gyuto is more than I even envisioned. I'm really glad we decided to do that one with a hidden tang.




I really love this picture of the Bacon Knife, where the curl depth almost makes it look like it has finger grooves. Like it's saying, "Pick me up. You know you wanna."

 

This thread is making me hungry

 

I was a little afraid when I read that Robin was taking action shots of you, but these pics are fine Very nice WIP, thanks. I could do the sanding drum/drill press spiel or - probably even better - stick the drum on my Foredom thingie. Where I am stuck is the shaping of the handle because I don't have a sander with a narrow, flexible belt part, only the flat 6x48. Could work, but is trickier. I still want to make one Western handle, one saya, and maybe a few other wooden knife things in my lifetime, just for the experience... In any case, these came out great, I like both handle styles here and the bacon wood pops.

Stefan

 

There were so many action shots that I couldn't post in this family fora.

Yeah it'd be tough to shape a western without a slack section of belt. Not impossible for sure, just rough.

 

Thanks for the insight of how ya tackle a few things. Beautiful handles as per usual.

 

So here they are finished up...

 

They're beautiful, Dave! Thanks so much for posting the WIP and letting me watch them come together. Just one thing.......

.... you left out the beautiful, crispy bacon picture. :bacon