A step by step…..umm, eehhhhh, Wouldn’t I have needed to have planned it out that way first??
Step 1. Take one Mora knife purchased from Evil bay
Step 2. Take one wide bolster lay it precisely along the centre line of the handle and tap gently with a hammer, realise just how hard the handle is and just “lamp it wan” (strike sharply)
Step 3 Use small anvil made by My Dad (Matt) and straighten tang.
Step 4 Realise you don’t know how you’re going to smooth the face of the coins you’re going to use as bolsters. Come up with a cunning plan, realise plan not so cunning as coin slips out of the clamp and imbeds itself in the shed wall, Cunning plan 2 works
Step 5 Cut hard wood strip to size using coins as guides
Step 6 Look at nice fine grained pine strapping you were planning on using and spot the leg off that table that needs fixing, (not anymore, don’t tell the Missus
)
Step 7 Glue bolster coin to first piece of wood using Contact adhesive. Once that sets up drill out the hole through both by drilling in a V from either side then using a dremmel with a grinding wheel coincidentally exactly the same width as your knife blade, grind the beds for the blade shoulders
Step 8 Take block of Beech?? (that nice table leg) and realise that the drill bit that is the right width is only just over half the length you need. Drill in a V from one end and then drill in from the other end and your exact measuring (blind luck)means they line up beautifully.Hammer this home using an old off cut as a hammering block.
Step 9 take second bolster coin and glue to second piece of hardwood. Realise that the best way to finish the coin is now because you can clamp the wood and buff the coin down easily. Drill through both and slip over tang and make sure the length of tang left exposed is right and you’re laughing. I made sure I squared off the end of the tang on the anvil at the start to make the riveting easier. As this was a bit of an experimental piece I decided to try using the epoxy putty and leave it showing like a liner (seems to have worked)
Step10 Rivetting. Tip, Take your time and don’t rush tap away as long as it takes. And now I left it to set up overnight
Step 7-10 are done with the blade wrapped in kitchen towel and gaffa tape and clamped in the vice of the workbench handed down from My Dad.
Step 11 Shaping the handle, all of the shaping on the handle was done with a sanding disk on a drill. No measuring . all done by eye and checking the feel of the grip. I used a really rough one first and then a 400 grit paper
Step 12 finishing the handle. I did this by dampening the handle let it dry then rubbing it down, did this repeatedly till the wood stayed smooth when it was damp. Coated the whole thing in clear epoxy smoothing it down then sanding this was done repeatedly. Til it felt right.
What you don’t see in the picture is the knot that I left in the handle that has a split right across it. I’ve mostly filled that with epoxy and I’m going to finish it by using a mixture of epoxy and copper dust from the coin bolsters to give a little flash of added colour to the handle. This was inspired by a craftsman and artist called Tim Stead. If you get a chance to check out his work, have a look.
Please don't take this as a way to do this. Just take it as inspiration that if I can do it any-one can. I made it up as I went along, it worked for me. All in all I'm really, really pleased with the knife, but I'll be a bit more organised for the next one. I've got the other Mora already
I hope it helps someone else.