That's looking very nice indeed - I'm liking the rounded shoulders and junction of the tang.
Smarty pants
Have you considered a modified hidden tang with a nut on threaded bar or a long bolt instead ?
Looks roughly like this (apologies for the crude, thrown-together image):
The slot for the head of the bolt can be done easily by drilling a couple of holes and squaring them off with a file, and the main slot can be cut in with a cutting disk on an andle grinder. Chamfer off the edges of the slots to take a good weld, weld the whole lot up and grind everything back flush. I usually grind the sides off the head of the bolt before welding to prevent excess heat build-up when cleaning up. Obviously you can make the same arrangement with a nut welded to threaded bar, but either way this is the strongest method I know of for jointed hidden tangs. I prefer silver solder to welding but either will produce an incredibly strong and durable joint - I came up with this method when destruction testing hidden tang knives. When I
finally managed to introduce failure (think sledge hammer-level abuse
) it was the joint that caused problems more often than not. This seemed a logical and simple progression to me, and I use it whenever I do a jointed hidden tang that has to be threaded on the pommel end.
Shhhhh...
Our little secret...
Looking forward to seeing how this one progresses