Knife Making & Repair #2: Groovin' n gluin'

Today I concentrated on the knife handle repair. On the bandsaw I split the canarywood blank in half and saw a really nice bookmatched colored stripe figure inside. So I decided to flip my blank to have bookmatched handles.

I planed the sides smooth using the new benchtop small parts jig I built yesterday. Then I carefully traced the odd-shaped skinny tang on the inside face. I began to sweat bullets as I sat there and quailed at the thought of chopping that odd shape out of the handle while getting a perfectly smooth face. I decided to take another look at the rotten handle and saw that the groove ran straight through the handle and thereupon I had an epiphany! It was routed! So I whipped up a flat bottom routing bit and a couple of scrap passes later I had a perfect setup for the handle.

Router table set-up for blade handle groovin’.

Another examination of the old handle showed that the blade shoulder was embedded in the handle most of the way. So I chiseled a slot for the shoulder to fit.

Shoulder fitting

And after admiring the fit a bit (and showing it off to my wife who responded with a bored, “uh huh”), I cut a piece of paper bag and glued the halves together sandwiched around the paper. First time to try this but I’ve seen Norm do it so hopefully I won’t have any problems splitting the halves later.

paper sandwich glue-up

After a bit of drying I’ll trace the original handle shape over the new blank and bandsaw it to shape and rasp/sand it to rough shape.

So far so good!

-- Anybody can become a woodworker, but only a Craftsmen can hide his mistakes!