How to Make a Knife Handle Out of Deer Antler

I guess old man center here and I'm gonna be showing you how I made this deer antler knife handle the blade I'm using is a more classic number one it's a three point nine inch carbon steel blade I was so excited when I found out more it makes these blank hidden tank blades because one more makes awesome knives and two hinting is ideal for making clean natural-looking Aylor handles they also sell a few different sizes like the classic number three here which is a little bigger at five point nine inches I'll put the links of these blades along with all the tools I use in the video and in description below choosing what style handle you want is decided a lot by the pieces then you have a ham and how well your blade fits into the natural curve and size of that piece we put the crown of the back kind of like Brad Pitt's knife and legends of fall cool but not super practical you can use a section of the beam these work good if you have a knife with the butt cap then you could just drill all the way through to antler and screw the cap on or you could put the bar at the back which is what I'm doing all antlers are going to be curved but you want your section to be straight enough to get the drill bit through the antler without puncturing the sides this piece is pretty straight but starts to curve a little too much up here I'm going to make my first cut higher than it needs to be and then make my final cut once I have all the other points removed and can examine the piece a little better this piece also has a point right in the middle dissection I want to use which is going to leave a white spot once we get it removed its moved out but each antler is going to be different and that's what's going to make your piece cool and unique I'm going to be using the 7/16 drill bit for the base just to give me some room to work around and a 5/16 bit for the rest of the tang and put a little bit of tape on the bit so you don't drill too deep we're gonna be using an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel to make the cuts and antler dust is pretty nasty stuff so make sure you got your respirator and your eye protection on [Music] you can see that curve better now so I'm gonna trim that up a little later but first I'm gonna take this point off and I'm just going to try to make the straightest line possible between these two levels [Music] now it's starting to look like a real handle I'm gonna make my posture we're gonna use a bigger bit first so I can open things up and then I'm going to switch to the smaller bit that's gonna take me down to the bird drilling through the antler without puncturing the sides it's going to be the hardest part in the process try aiming at the middle point of the bottom from the start if you start drilling A to D from the angle it is going to be harder for you to change that angle later on take plenty of stops to check your angle and pay attention to the area on the outside of your antler where the point of your [ __ ] feels like it's the closest and stop immediately if you see any smoke coming from that area you can't really see it on the video but I just saw the smallest puff of smoke coming from this point so I got a small hole here which is fine the epoxy will fill it in and make the area strong again but too big of a hole is gonna look bad now that I got the antler drilled out through the depth that I want I'm going to clean up the opening a little bit using the dremel with a pointed grindstone if your antler is nice and straight you can get by with making a smaller hole so it won't show the epoxy as much but because mine is curved I had to make a larger open you get the angle right before I start mixing of the epoxy I'm gonna put a little bit of painters tape around the blade in the handle here's that hole I made really while drilling I'm gonna make sure that the tape has a really good fit around this so the epoxy doesn't leak out of it if you never worked with the PAC's before is pretty simple there's a part a and a Part B this brand says so you mix them 50/50 but other epoxies may have different proportions so following instructions that are on the bottle I'm also using some fine sawdust which is going to make that epoxy thicker and he'll match up the color a little bit better to the antler they make disposable mixing cups for easy measuring and so you don't have to ruin a bowl but I literally have no other where mine went so here we are make sure you mix the epoxy up really well so you don't have any areas that don't feel like here once it's mixed it'll start to heat up but this brand you should get about 30 minutes of work time you want to add just enough sawdust and make the mix less runny and just to give it a little bit of color this is just a small syringe I use them to warm my goats but they also work great for getting the epoxy into the ant line without making a giant mess it also helps with removing excess epoxy if you put a little bit too much in give datang a light coat of epoxy before you drop it into the antler give it a few taps to get any bubbles traps inside up to the surface if you have a lot of bubbles at the top you can run a hairdryer over them to pop them make your last adjustments and let the epoxy cure overnight once the epoxy is cured you can remove the tape and examine your knife with the dremel in the grinding stone I'm going to angle down the sides away from the blade and then smooth out the edges [Music] for the point I'm going to smooth down the edges but I'm also going to try to keep as much that natural grain impact as I can [Music] then using a sanic bit for the dremel I'm going to smooth out the rougher areas at the grinding stone left then I'm just going to go over the areas again with some 220 grit finishing sandpaper I'm also going to sand down the areas that I Nix on the blade was to finish the sandpaper and then we'll quickly hit it with a polishing Dremel bit once everything's smooth and looking nice I'm gonna seal the handle with oilmen seed oil this is also gonna help darken the lighter areas that were left by sanding just give it a thin coat and let it dry overnight

Channel: OldManStino

Views: 103,052

Rating: 4.9092841 out of 5

Keywords: Deer antler, deer antler knife, deer antler knife handle, white tail deer antler knife, elk antler knife, Morakniv, Morakniv Classic No.1, Morakniv Classic No.2, Morakniv Classic No.3, legends of the fall, legends of the fall knife, hidden tang, deer antler hidden tang, How to Make a Knife Handle Out of Deer Antler, Replacing knife handle, Antler handle, deer antler crafts

Id: jpkEbnQSZtc

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2019