My blades haven't come back from heat treat yet, and I'm still waiting on my new steel to arrive. Since I couldn't get much done on actual knives this weekend, I did a little preperation and experimentation. I did recieve one of my supply orders from a Pop's knife supplies. This place doesn't have much but they did have the best price I could find on epoxy and micarta sheets. This is enough epoxy to last me quite a while and enough 1/4" thick black canvas micarta to make handle scales for at least six full tang knives.

I also just drew out some new designs I want to try. These are my version of what is inspired by the more traditional Scandinavian blades. The bottom two with the straight spine are similar in shape to the Puukko. Notice that that these use a stick tang instead of being full tang like the ones I've done so far. The paper templates are what I have been using so far, but they quickly degrade as you handle them and trace around them.

I've desided to start cutting my templates out of some thin mild steel. It's more work initially, but it should last much longer and give me a crisper, more accurate line when I trace the profile onto my blade steel. I intend to make one of these for every new design/size from here on out.

 

 



While I had this mild steel laying around, I figured I would test my intended method for mounting the stick tang blades. There are a few ways to do it, and the one I really want to use invlolves the tang not protruding through the butt of the handle. I have had a couple of people suggest that this might not be strong enough on it's own, so I want to test it out before I make the actual knives. The blade below is just a crash test dummy from mild steel, so please don't pay any attention to the way the grind looks. I also put some gouges into the tang for the epoxy to grab onto. This is probably shorter than the real tang will be. I cut a rough slot into a scrap piece of wood, filled it with epoxy, and clamped the blade in.

This is obviously done in a very rushed and sloppy fashion with very poor materials. So if this can stand up to some torture testing then there shouldn't be any question about the real deal holding up. I will post the results soon.