Make Your Handle Fit like a Glove: 15" Bowie Part. 3

welcome back to the knife studio the way I get that glove tight fit with my handles is by betting them in epoxy onto the tank and you're gonna see me do that at the end of the video if you want to see how we got the knife to this stage so far and be sure to check out part 1 and part 2 links in the description since I'm doing a takedown Construction knife I need threads on the end of my tank so that's the first place I'm going to start I didn't know it at this stage but I actually had my lines too close together I normally double check my measurements over and over again because they say measure twice cut once and a lot of times I'll measure like 10 times and cut once but in this case I didn't do it and it came back to bite me since this knifes for our special online bowie course were working on I decided to take this opportunity to go ahead and continue showing how I threaded tang [Music] so after showing how to get threads onto your tank I went ahead and ground off all the threads and I'm gonna show an alternative method to getting a threaded tank this was just a good opportunity to show that things can go wrong but there's lots of different ways of getting the same result you might just have to follow a little bit different path than you originally thought with a little creativity and patience I cut a slot into the end of the tank and then took an Allen bolt and slightly ground some flat sides in it until it fit nicely in that slot [Music] took it over to the MIG welder and turn the heat up pretty high and welded that bolt in solid [Music] [Music] and now I have the threaded part of the tank the size I originally wanted it now that we've got some nice 1032 threads on the end of our tank I can go ahead and start working on the pummel nut all the fittings for this knife are 416 stainless I like to have a pretty good sized chunk of stainless that way if I get the hole off centered a little bit to be enough wiggle room to get the pummel nut the size I want on the lathe [Music] having high-quality taps really makes the difference when it comes to threading stuff like this and throwing them away as soon as they're not sharp anymore [Music] [Music] I like to have the Palama inset into the pommel because it makes it so I can put a nice smooth radius on the end of the pommel and I don't have to have any kind of a flat spot for the pommel nut to rest on since it's set into the pommel itself I've been listening to the Forge cast which is a really good podcast for bladesmiths and blacksmiths and sword smiths and axe myths and pretty much anybody who really likes forging or Forge related stuff and on their Sam towns mentioned a really cool YouTube channel called clickspring so I went and checked it out and since then have pretty much watched all his videos and they're super cool and detail-oriented on making handmade clocks from scratch with just basic materials seam clickspring run the lathe so precisely really got me inspired and excited to work on this pummel mat i already really like turning down stuff on the lathe but watching clicks brings videos really got me extra excited about turning something down on the lathe for this online course we're not using some of my more expensive larger equipment so getting this hole in the side of the pommel nut is quite a bit more challenging than it normally would be because normally I just chuck it up in the milling machine and I can start the hole with a milling bit and it doesn't matter what radius it's on or anything it'll go right where you put it but on the little drill press I'm using it's a whole nother story I was super concerned about how I'm gonna get this hole started on here this drill press is so wobbly and everything you can see the bit just like shaking all around I decided to start the hole with some little carbide burs and that worked amazing it works so much better than I thought and it ended up not being a big deal at all to get that hole through the pummel nut the hole in the problem that by the way is for my takedown wrench which happens to be a drill bit that's how I tighten and loosening [Music] I'm drilling out a little bit larger hole on the end of the handle so we have some room for the pummel nut to fit in there [Music] [Music] this is the first full-blown assembly since getting the pommel nut done and getting the tang threaded I spent quite a bit of prep time on the handle and because of that the first fit up is remarkably good it's not perfect though you can see some daylight between the wood and the metal here and there but it came out really close to being right on I only have to do a little bit of adjusting to get the perfect fit and not see any daylight between any of the metal and the wood pieces [Music] for my takedown knives I like to have lineup pins in the metal pieces going into the wood and that way you can take the knife apart and put it back together and those pins index everything into the exact same place every time so I'm drilling some holes into this front spacer for the lineup pins [Music] have the front spacer super glued in place just to hold it while I transfer those holes from the metal down into the wood [Music] it's real easy to get the part off just by giving it a little tap with the hammer after you're done drilling the holes [Music] I do the same for the lineup pins on the pummel end except I have to use a template in this case because we don't want the holes to go all the way through the pommel so I just have a piece of metal that I could put on there and use as a template for the two side holes [Music] super glue is my friend [Music] okay so what I'm doing here is laying the blade on the flat surface in this case it was like 3540 thousandths of an inch off center with 40 thousands of an inch difference from side to side that means the palma is only out about 20 thousands of an inch which is approximately the thickness of a fingernail but I wanted to get it closer than that probably plus or minus about five thousandths of an inch I ended up getting it in the end but it took quite a few trips over to the sanding block doing some micro adjustments on the ends of the handle messing with the angle just a little bit to where that palm that came out in the center it's time to start shaping this block of wood down into an actual handle my normal procedure for shaping a handle like this is to get the main profile cut out first and then get the side profile dialed in and then start rounding off all the corners in doing the subtle shaping [Music] the next thing we're gonna do is get this handle bedded in epoxy you can do this bedding at multiple stages all the way up until the handle is ready for hand sanding so right now the handle fits onto the tang but there's a little bit of play in it we use brooches and everything to to scrape away the wood inside the handle to get it to fit all the way up on the tang it doesn't leave you with a perfect fit just using drill bits and brooches you could end up with some hot spots where the Tang hits the handle in a few places on the inside and if you went to chop really hard with the buoy those hot spots would absorb all the shock and possibly break your handle so betting the handle in epoxy gives you that perfect glove fit between the wood and the metal part of the tank that way if you go to chop really hard all the shock and vibration is distributed all the way through the handle start out we got to coat all the parts that we don't want permanently stuck with petroleum jelly otherwise known as Vaseline the only place we really want the epoxy sticking is on the inside of the handle but not to the tank so we cover the Tang the guard front spacer the ends of the handle a pommel and the pommel nut inside and out I like to use west system epoxy because it's top-shelf stuff and it works really well I put about two teaspoons of colloidal silica in the epoxy because it kind of acts as rebar and reinforces the epoxy and makes it just a little stronger [Music] [Music] a pommel and the front spacer are on the handle I'm gonna fill it up with epoxy stick the blade in there and make sure there's epoxy using out everywhere [Music] go ahead and tighten the pommel nut down and then clean off any extra excess epoxy [Music] now if the handles assembled we just gotta let the epoxy dry and then we can pull the handle apart and we'll have that perfect glove fit stay tuned to the next video we're gonna finish shaping this handle and start shaping all these fittings if you're new to the channel consider subscribing we're all about making functional art mostly in the form of custom knives hit that thumbs up button it really helps us out thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye [Music]

Channel: Kyle Royer

Views: 1,071,989

Keywords: knife making, how to make a knife, how to heat treat a knife, how to make a bowie knife, how to make a bowie, knives, kyle royer, kyle royer knives, making a knife, sharp, how to make knives, bladesmith, master smith, blades, damascus, knifemaker, diy knife, anvil, forging, custom, knife, great content, steel, bowie build, bowie knife, 10 inche bowie knife, blade, knifemaking, knife maker

Id: t0mW0nXH8Wg

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019