hidden tang knife w/ antler handle

hey it's Mike from Mike Jones knife and tool on this episode I'm going to be making a hidden Tang knife with an antler handle so right off the bat the difference between full tang and hidden Tang full tang over here this is a hidden Tang these are this is what a Tang looks like inside of a full tang knife you can see the steel runs all the way through the Tang that handle is just chock full of Tang full tang knife on a hidden Tang this is what's referred to as the tang the part that goes inside the handle you don't see it at all it's all inside of there so that's what that looks like inside you have to bore a hole in through the wood often a type of guard or something will be put on the front of the handle there and but the idea is the entire Tang is like it sounds hidden today we're going to be doing a hidden Tang which would be this guy here and customer sent me this piece of antler that he's got he wants me to make the handle hood of this kind of section here so the knife will be in that type of acidity there so working with antler can be a lot of fun because none of them are really no two are alike basically but that can also pose a lot of challenges you sometimes I have to get really creative and figure out exactly how you're going to get a feasible and comfortable and functional handle that is something that's extremely irregular sometimes you know nothing is ever symmetrical and you just you get to use your creativity a lot so step one is to go ahead and cut out what you're going to use for your handle I sort of went ahead and jump right into this one but you need to find a section that's comfortable to hold on to but is also long enough to be an actual grip a knife unfortunately this one's got a little bit of damage here so I'm going to have to do something about that but that's kind of what you're looking for and then to cut it out I just I use a handsaw I don't know why I guess you could use a power saw you know big chops are something to cut through it I think I just I like the control you can get it at just doing it by hand and if you are if you do end up working with any antler bone don't be alarmed that smell is unfortunately normal don't get rid of your offcuts all these little things maybe it's the pack rat in me but I can't seem to to toss out these little pieces they seem to have a purpose somewhere I've used them for you drill out a hole and put a ferrocerium rod in them it makes for a really interesting handle for for a Ferro rod things like that okay so jumping ahead next you want to get yourself a nice long drill bit and get to laying out where you want your hole to be for the tang to go into unfortunately like I say because nothing about this is square or we're flat or anything there's a lot of eyeballing kind of laying out where you want that hole to go and then you drill out a bunch something I do I'm not sure if this is what if this is what everybody does but I grind kind of a little tip on the end of my tang and then I clamp it in the vise I've got it resting the point of the knife is resting on a little block of wood inside the vise down there then I heat the tip up with a torch till a superhot and then I'll gem my handle material down on top onto the tang and it will actually burn its way in there and make a perfect hole for itself oh it smells bad whoo there we go we're made it and I like to just take my long drill bit again and if this thing inverted just kind of clean out any of the burnt Saudi crap inside of there you get a more positive bond with your glue one quick note for anyone who doesn't know what these guys are they're called soft jaws they just have a little magnet on the back and they clamp into your vise for you so anytime you're working with something that you need to hang on to and clamp down that you don't want to ruin like the finish on like an antler these guys help you give it a really good grasp on it without marring up right so once you're once you bottom dote on like cool off the tang with some water so it's nice and cool to work with but also of the the tang is super hot which means it's expanded quite a bit the metal grows and so as it's burning in it's burning a bigger hole than it really needs so when you cool it off the tang actually shrinks a little bit which is great then you get kind of a loose fit inside your handle which is nice because you'd want some room for your epoxy later on when you glue this up you don't want like a super tight fit you have to squeeze in there and it squeezes all your epoxy oh there's nothing left a dry a dry joint is a weak joint they say so the next thing to decide is what to do about the front it's just an unfinished look what to do with all this crap here's a couple of quick examples this little guy this is an old knife I'm planning on restoring it's actually get a leather handle hidden Tang and the tang actually comes out the end there it's threaded and you screw on this bolster at the end this one's just got a little brass finger guard there keeps you from sliding forward onto the blade which is pretty typical very simple to do have done a couple of those and yeah it looks nice and it covers up the end pretty well too this one I did a similar idea but I made it out of wood which I don't you don't see all that often and I think it's kind of an interesting take on the finger guard because it's you know it's got some texture it's a little more interesting than just a flat piece and and also I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this one yet I've also seen lots of that and I've done like you can taper this down a lot and just and wrap it with sinew it's a more traditional finish now sinew is cool because you can get it wet and it gets super soft and easy to stretch out and then when it hardens it dries out and hardens like rock-hard so it said it's a pretty handy material for that and then I could run it up higher here and cover up some of this damage so I'm not sure what I'm gonna do this on yet let me think about it okay so because I don't value my time at all I decided to go with a stainless steel guard on the front of the the handle what you missed is basically drilling a couple of holes and then a ton of filing with these tiny little files just filing and checking and filing and checking until that would actually fit through the hole and then once it did you have to make it fit really nice and tight up to the front of the blade because you don't want to have any any gaps showing through there once it's all glued up you also don't want to see your hole on either side of the blade here in that little seam so it's you're just constantly taking this thing apart and checking and putting it back together and checking and filing and you're also filing on the the blade to get your guard to stitch down nice and tight and it's just a long arduous process that that gets us to this point so now I'm going to clean up around the handle clean the guard up and get it as tight to the horn as I can and go from there all right so I've left the garden around the handle pretty good it's not perfect yet but what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the guard off and just kind of clean up the edges really buff up the front surface to get it basically to finished polish and then then I'm going to clamp it together glue it clamp it and then once it's set for sure and then this guy's not going to have any type of jiggle that's what we'll go around and get this finished up okay so I've got the the face cleaned up a little bit I just I'm keeping it like a satin finish I don't want to go super polish because then the nice not going to be and I just want to make it match the knife it's the same steel same stainless so that's going to look good at the back I've pulled up a little bit with a drill bit reason for that is I'm going to put some epoxy on that step face as well and and it will just help it here do the face of the horn the horn itself is plenty porous enough it'll soak up enough without having to rough it up and at all so that'll that'll fix nicely Jam the knife in there we go I've also cleaned up the butt end a little bit I just rounded it slightly it's just it's a it's just a natural kind of finish I'm not going to do much more than that to it it's just it's smooth it's comfortable yeah you know some of you who might be paying attention will ask what's going to go on with this I hit this with a bunch of high grit sandpaper and it smoothed out nicely I think we're just going to chalk that one up to character alright so it's been overnight our epoxy is cured and everything is set so I'll go ahead and clean up around the rest of the guard I'm going to try to get as close to the horn as I can without damaging the horn itself I've already got a bit of a sham fur around the edge there I don't want to go too much more than that already I just want to get get us as seamless transition there as I can all I'm doing now is just hitting it with a couple grits of sandpaper to clean up around the edge of the guard here there we go nice and cleaned up it is really nice and smooth transition between the guard and the bone or the antler I'm really happy with that so let's unravel there you have it sports fans so all that's left really now to do is that you in my little makers mark and give the edge of final hone and see if the customer wants a sheets for this bad boy but otherwise so that wraps it up thanks for watching I appreciate it I think my YouTube channels up to like over 450 total views so that's awesome but keep checking back I got some more fun stuff coming up

Channel: Mike Jones Knife & Tool

Views: 244,926

Rating: 4.8225603 out of 5

Keywords: Knife (Sports Equipment)

Id: rIHBNGj_MxU

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 22 2015