Rehandle Gallery

Here's a 240mm Hiromoto Honyaki that I just finished up working on.

The blade was initially pretty rough finished. I started by re-sanding and polishing to a "high satin" similar to what I do to my own knives. As you turn the blade in the light you can see the hamon now. I also rounded the spine and choil for comfort.

A conversion from full tang to hidden tang was done and then an AZ Ironwood block installed in place of the pakkawood scales. A couple of spacers were added between the bolster and wood for accent as well as a copper/nickel silver mosaic pin installed.

The ironwood is some of the very best I've worked with, and oddly it's some of the least expensive! I'm not complaining mind you. The handle has been treated with 12 coats of my varnish finish.

This knife is headed off to OZ, and hopefully, to a happy new customer.

 

Stunning, Dave!
Fit and finish looks amazing as usual

 

Thanks Warren

 

Here we have a brand new Watanabe (suminagashi?) suji with a handle made out of ancient bog oak (carbon dated at 3400 yrs old!) paired with streaked blond buffalo horn. A simple handle, looks very similar to a Japanese ebony handle, a clean design by the knife's owner.

The bog oak is some of the oddest wood I've worked with. This particular block was VERY hard - like a rock, it was like shaping glass! It's strange to be wet sanding at 2500x and feeling grit (like little pieces of sand - minerals?) falling out of the block and rolling around under the wood. Very little scratching happened though - again - odd. I believe what you see in the pictures as little shiny flecks are these minerals in the wood.

I took the liberty to fill the heavy open grain with drying oil prior to finish sanding and applying the finishing coats but the handle had a glass like surface before I even put any oil on it, I just made it more even.

Picture taking of this handle proved to be the biggest challenge of all, see for yourself...

 

Here's a Hiromoto honyaki gyuto that's been thinned & polished wearing a new handle made from ironwood burl...

 

Here's a Shun bread knife, sold through Williams Sonoma, that's been modified a bit.

It was supposed to have had a simple handle upgrade by changing out the plastic for a burled wood but that all went south during the execution. Small poorly ground hollow bolster and soft wood forced my hand to poor craftsmanship so that coarse of action was scrapped. In it's place we went with grinding off the bolster and going for an octagonal wa design.

The customer requested African Blackwood, black buffalo horn, white bone, and a mosaic pin as the components....he got them all.

I hope you like it John!

 

Here's 3 Watanabe's fresh from the rehandling bench...

 

Wow so nice...what species of wood D?

 

From left to right....Spalty Maple Burl, Figured Ironwood, Ironwood Burl


Thanks Jim

 

Here we have a 240 mm Sukenari ZDP189 damascus clad gyuto with a brand new handle made out of desert ironwood and an 11 spacer stack of copper, nickel silver, & G10 spacers.

What do you think?

 

Stunning!

Love the spacers...

 

Thanks Jim

 

Another stunner, Dave!
It must take a lot of skill to get those spacers flush and polished without going too far with the wood either side!

 

I suppose it does take some skill (and learned tricks for sure!) but honestly it's a LOT easier to do with octagonal wa handles than most other styles such as oval or westerns. With octagonal we can use a hard flat substrate as a backing to sandpaper to get the pieces to fit up nice and even. With the other styles we have to free sand and this is tricky stuff not to screw up....and I have.

Thanks for the kind words!

 

Looks great, Dave!

 

Thanks Rick

 

Thumbs up!

 

Thanks David

 

Here's a Watanabe cleaver that was originally western handled, now converted to octagonal wa. The customer supplied the wood, wanted a slightly larger handle, and for it to be flush it to the blade. The wood is maple burl. I hope this works for you Ryan.

 

This one is a slightly different handle than I normally do although I hope to do more of these in the near future.



The wa handle is made from figured maple and blond buffalo horn. The wood was provided by the customer who got it from his uncle. As you can see in the before and after shot the color of the maple was originally very natural (blond) yet the customer wanted color. Since I was fortunate to have him here in my shop for a class we were able to come up with a plan of attack for this as well as he picked out the horn that looked good to him.

What I did to achieve the look of the wood's end result was a several part process....

First I used nitric acid/iron to bring out the figuring quite a bit. This is an old technique used for hundreds of years in the rifle making industry of Pennsylvania, etc. Google it up, it's very interesting stuff.

The customer also wanted the wood to be burnt so I scorched it....lightly.

Then I dyed/stained it using 5 different types of products to get just the right look. We were shooting for some red tones and some flash of orange/gold/yellow and got pretty close to what we both were looking for.

In person this handle has crazy movement and flash but in the pictures looks sort of blah in comparison but at least the customer should be pleased when he gets it in hand.

The knife is a Fujiwara something or other that's been thinned by the gents down at District Cutlery with the spine and choil rounded/polished by myself for comfort.

I hope it serves you well Nick!