Smith357's blog: "The Armory"

created on 07/11/2007 | http://fubar.com/the-armory/b101561

posted on 07/11/2007&nbs-07:00;@&nbs-07:00;05:07&nbs-07:00;pm

Making a Damascus Knife
http://fubar.com/making-a-damascus-knife/b101561-429275

Many years ago before I was married with children and had a disposable
income, I used to make knives on a regular basis. I started this hobbie
by buying pre made blades and parts the basically just assembled and
finished the knives. I later learned thastock relief method and was
making my own blades and cutting my own pommels and guards out of bar stock.
Around this transition time a good friend of mine and I picked up a
couple of nice Damascus blades from a local knife supply company here
in Columbus called Koval Knives to make a matching set of
nice Damascus skinning knives. I made up my knife very quickly and gave it to a very good friend for his 50th birthday.

Fast forward 10 years when my friend was cleaning out his basment last
weekend and found the parts for the knife he never made. These parts
have been passed to me for completion of the project. I'm going to eyeball
these parts for a while and decide how best to proceed. I'm
thinking about doing the handle in the Scagel style, and sanding and polishing
the blade to subdue the damascus just a lttle bit, I still
want to keep the pattern visible, just not so rough. And grinding the raised
ricasso flat All this may change at any moment though.

And I will post my progress on this project

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I just ground off the hump in the ricasso using my 12 inch disk sander.
It think turned out very well. I then used 400 grit sandpaper to make
the pattern a bit more subdued and buffed the blade with a cutting compound to get the pattern where I wanted it.

I then had to flatten the face the cast brass guard so theat it mates up
better with the blade. Fitting these two pieces is crucial to a
professional appearence, you can see the large gap in the picture that will take a lot of hand fitting to get just right.

The easy part is done, I fitted the handle and have it pretty much the way
I want it. I had some leftover exotic woods I'm using for spacers
rather than the standard plastic spacer material. I will be using Rock
Maple and Blood Wood for one large spacer between the guard and the
stag handle.

Now comes one of the most important steps, the hours of final fitting,
shaping, and polishing. I will use a good marine epoxy and a small
nickle silver pin to hold it all together.

I will try to keep the gentle S curve the knife has, now I need to find a small compass to inlay in the pommel

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After Hours of fitting sanding and final polish the knife is done.... almost..... It still needs to have an edge put on it.