Anyone like to build knives?

[keefallan]

I should be working on my crossflow motor. But, its starting to get too close to the holidays. So, over the last weekend, I figured to get some of my Christmas gifts done before I felt rushed.

Building knives is a hobby of mine(I probably have too many hobbies). And I enjoy giving them as gifts.......its a usable gift, and the blanks I use are really good steel. Some in the past have been damascus. But these here are not. I do have one Damascus blade to build for the missus before the 25th though.

These are the blanks. The chefs knives are decent steel. I am using the two utility knives as steak knives for my mom and dad....one of the chefs knives as well.
The wood I chose is Chechen. It is in the Rosewood family and I have some exotic wood blanks in the shop.

Here, I had to relieve the back area of the scales to clear the weld at the back of the knife handle. After I did the first set, I remembered I had a router..........DOH!!




I am laminating a dyed strip of wood to the inside of the scales for the steak knives...........blue for dad and pink for mom. That way they cant argue over who's knife is who's

Btw, 5 min epoxy is my epoxy of choice. I wipe down the scales with Acetone to remove any oil in the rosewood.......like you would do with teak. The blanks get roughed up with course grit paper and then wiped down with Acetone.

I had to fit the scales for the mosaic pins. Its a nice touch and it helps keep them secured. I drilled them out and then it was glue time. I realized this morning that I didnt take any pics of the glue ups. i dont know how that slipped my attention. Sorry about that.



Here is the scales fitted to the chefs knives but before glue ups and drilling for the mosaic pins.

Here is the completed knife handles for mom and dad. I sanded the handles a little too far for the blue knife or not enough for the pink. But either way, they are perfectly smooth and finished, and no one would notice unless sitting side by side like this.


Here's a close up of the finished handles with the mosaic pin installed. They turned out really nice and the grain of the wood is really good as well. They look even better in person.

And this is the finished product. I ended up buffing one of the chefs knives and leaving the other one brushed.

Thanks for looking!!