ok, so a while back Remo007 bought a kit from me. its a woodlore blade, o1 steel 5/32" thick. he got some beautiful stabilized scales with it. he ran into a little trouble installing the lanyard tube, and cracked the bottom of the scale off. being the sport he is, he continued working on it, and made the other side match. we named it the "Tacti-lore" due to the bottom half of the tang being exposed lol! nonetheless, he sent it to me for an overhaul. once i got it, i drilled the loveless bolts out, and broke the scales off.
ran into some minor snags after that. when applying the new finish to the blade, the bottom part of the handle had deep cuts in it from where he had been filing the scales. gouged the metal pretty bad. no big deal... TAPER THE TANG!!! so thats what i did, i tapered the tang down, and it now looks like nothing ever happened to it before hand. the following is a build along that i plan to make a sticky, this shall be part 1. tomorrow ill make a video of how i finish the handle scales and shape them.
here is the blade minus the scales that were on it. look at the butt and notice the deep gouges
we found some great looking scales, i call them "burnt orange". they are stabilized box elder burl as usual
so first, decide the orientation of your scales (pick a top and a bottom)
next, get your liner material of choice and draw them out
once you have all the lines drawn, go ahead and cut them out.
next is over to the glue station. i lay some newspaper or phonebook pages down, so the overflow of glue doesnt glue the scales to the bench.
i just use a small scrap piece of leather to spread the glue, you can use whatever you have around
apply the glue to both surfaces like so:
be sure to spread the glue evenly over the entire surface on both the liner and the scale.
next (after both scales are glued with the liners) i lay another phone book page over the scales, and place a block of wood on top of them. then i clamp the block to the bench with C clamps.
this applies even pressure across both scales.
once the glue has cured, remove the blocks and paper and examine your scales. make sure there are no gaps between them and the liner. if there are, fill the void with glue and re clamp.
while i was waiting for the liners to cure, i started tapering the tang.
after the scales are totally done drying, go ahead and sand the overlaping liners flush with the scales.
next step is to get the 45? angle on the tops of the scales. i use my 6" disc sander for this part.
set the table at 45? and begin sanding the tops.
once done, they should look something like this.
next step is very important, as if you skip it its really hard to correct later on. apply the final polish on the tops and get them all nice and shiny. its really hard to do this once its glued to the blade :/
ok, back to the gluing station
get another scrap (or whatever you used to spread the glue the first time) and repeate the gluing process like before.
acetone. its your friend. use it to remove glue from your fingers, AND the parts of the scales you just polished up!!!! i use q tips to clean the area where the scales stop at the top.
clamp that biotch down and find something else to do while you wait for the glue to cure.
ok now, PAY ATTENTION!!! after the first scale is cured all the way, go ahead and start removing the excess wood. this first cut is VITAL!!
now, after you have the excess removed, go ahead and drill your 2 pilot holes for the loveless bolts and the lanyard tube.
i strongly recommend spending the 3$ and get double fluted bits. they really do make all the difference :p
i did this one pretty close to the edge of the spine, so there really wasnt much to cut with the scroll saw so i just sanded it real quick to get it flush on the back side.
ok, this is where you should be now.
now, repeat everything i just taught you, and get the other side glued up!!!
i hope you were paying attention earlier.. remember that VITAL cut i told you about... be sure to repeate it on this side as well...
if you paid attention, now you have enough scraps to make a matching FIRESTEEL later!!
ok, now cut off the rest, and finish drilling your holes
sand your lanyard tube and loveless bolt collars now. i had to skip a few steps, as i really needed both hands to install everything correct before the glue set up on me. apologies if i hurt your feelings.
once the lanyard is in, countersink your loveless bolts, glue the collars into the holes, PACK the threads of the bolt with glue and screw em in!!
here are some random shots of finish sanding and buffing.
