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Fit & Finish Fit and Finish = the difference in "good art" and "fine art." Join in, as we discuss the fine art of finish and embellishment.

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  #1  
Old 04-13-2011, 02:29 PM
Airth Airth is offline
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Best way to finish a "through" tang with antler?

Been awhile posting! I'm still trying to work some of the newbie kinks out...will be awhile yet, ha!

I've done a few searches on this subject with no real results, so sorry if I'm hitting a topic that's been covered extensively.

I'm almost finished with "restoring" an old Air Force pilot's survival knife I picked up, although modifying/redoing would be a more appropriate term. If you're familiar with those knives, they have a full, hidden tang under layers of stacked leather washers and ends in a bolt-shaped solid pommel, which can be used as a hammer if needed. In the case of this knife, it was a cheap gun show rubbish bin find since it had been broken; the pommel had snapped off and was missing, along with a few layers of the leather washers. The blade, although abused and beat up, is still in good shape and workable.

In what I'm doing, I'm in the process of replacing the handle with some really good quality antler I inherited from a friend many years ago. I've painstakenly drilled through it, which was tough since it has very little pithy core, and am in the process of sanding it smooth and am still deciding if I want to layer it with something else. I'm thinking a layer or two between the guard and butt plate would look good, like recycling some of those leather washers or throw some micarta or nickel in there as spacers. Ideally I'd like to find a couple of solid zinc spacers, since the knife and fittings are carbon steel and tend to rust; zinc prevents that. Anyway, I've left more than 1" of tang out the other side of the antler, and am planning to finish it with a carbon steel butt plate...it matches the guard it came with and is the same thickness. I'd like to peen the tang remnant down into the plate and blend it in so that it looks like a solid piece, the idea being the butt plate is flat and strong enough to still use as a hammer if needed. Since I'd be peening over antler, my little knowledge of physics would say that would crack.

So now on to the questions:

Would it be safe to peen the tang into the butt plate? I know I should attach and blend it to the antler first, but would it crack the antler with all that whamming the tang end to mushroom it over? The end of the tang is already annealed...an intentional accident from burning the antler on after the pilot hole was drilled. The tang on these knives is a thick retangle.

I'm thinking an alternate would be to thread the tang and finish it with a little finale outside the butt plate...kinda defeats the clean finish I'm intending and the idea of using it as a hammer. This won't be a hammer with a knife blade, of course...my intent is to keep the function of the original, just a lot more custom.

Another alternate idea is threading it and putting a pommel on. The original configuration of this knife has a solid pommel press fitted over the rectangular tang. I don't have the equipment (or funds) to try that, so a vice and hammer are my options. I suppose if the pommel is beefy enough it would work, but I'd still like the clean lines of a butt plate matching the guard perfectly.

And..where can I find *solid* zinc harware? Zinc-plated is easy, but *solid* stuff seems impossible to find. If I can put a solid zinc spacer (think a shaped washer) between the mild steel parts and the handle, it won't rust through.

Thanks in advance for everyone's suggestions/input!

As an aside, a little about those knives in case you're faced with the same issue...

The ones made by Camillus and Ontario are the real thing; they're plenty of Chinese knockoffs to be avoided. Construction-wise, they are very solid; these can take LOTS of abuse and still hold up well. The most common complaint (after much abuse, many years and many miles) is the guard loosening up and rattling around, since there are no welds or pins to physically attach the guard to the blade. The guard is followed by a small carbon steel spacer ring and just held in place by tension from the leather washers and the press-fitted butt cap. Over time, as the leather shrinks everything loosens up a bit. My fix for this, besides using antler instead of leather, is to better fit the guard and solder everything in place.


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Old 04-13-2011, 04:18 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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An alternative to press fitting is the heat shrink the pommel onto the tang. I've not actually done it, but here's the process as I have read it. Make a blind hole in the pommel just slightly undersized to the tang. From how the process was describe, you want the tang to just not quite fit into the hole. Then you heat up the pommel and slip it over the tang. The hole in the steel will have expanded when the pommel was heated and should slip over. When the pommel cools the steel will contract and hold onto the tang tightly. You will want to make the blind hole in the pommel slightly deeper than the length of the tang that stick up through the handle just to make sure it doesn't bottom out short of the mark.

Doug Lester


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Old 04-13-2011, 08:34 PM
macaroni macaroni is offline
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You might be able to go threaded tang.. take your butt plate and solder a nut on the inside of it. you may need to hollow out your stag a lttle for clearance from the nut. hope that helps. dave
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Old 04-14-2011, 11:21 AM
Airth Airth is offline
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Awesome!

Thanks for the replies!

I'm starting to rethink the whole "hammer if you have to" concept anyway with the stag...doesn't quite make sense to whack on something esentially made of bone. I'm trimming the fit of the antler and am leaning more towards the screwed on pommel style now, although I might be able to incorportate Doug's idea of heating that up to. You think that would work? Heating up the tapped pommel...tapped just a hair smaller than the threaded tang, then crank it down and let it cool?

I bet that sucker won't come off...


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Old 04-14-2011, 03:03 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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That's how some sword pommels were attached in the olden days. Your right, once they're on and cooled they're on to stay. Hopefully someone who has actually used the method will chime in. I was thinking about this post on one that Ed Tipton made about punching the tang holes in guards. I wonder if you made a punch the some size as the tang and punched a tang hole in but not trough the pommel if that would contract enough when cool to hold later. The way I would do it, and may try on a future sword, is to punch the hole, let the pommel cool to room temperature, size everthing up, then reheat the pommel and fit it.

Of course, there's always JB Weld. I figure if the old Norse sword smiths had it they would have used it so, in a perverted way, it's traditional.

Doug Lester


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Last edited by Doug Lester; 04-14-2011 at 03:10 PM.
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Old 04-18-2011, 02:46 PM
Airth Airth is offline
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Thanks!

Thanks for the tip, Doug! It worked perfectly

I don't have a forge or forging equipment (yet), so I used a drill press for the pilot holes and filed in the rest. I made the hole in the butt plate just smaller than the tang; once I heated it up to red it slipped right on with very little effort. I used a piece of pipe to whack it down while it was still hot, so once it cooled it provided a *very* solid joint. I recycled two of the leather washers from the original handle, which polished up nicely with the antler. I had inserted a black micarta spacer between the leather spacer and butt plate, but it charred away when I burned the butt plate on..go figure. There is a small gap in places between the last spacer and the butt that I had filled in with epoxy, but it got buffed away. All in all I'm pretty happy with it though. I've included pics of it and an original AF Pilot's knife for comparison.

http://knifenetwork.com/forum/pictur...&pictureid=782
http://knifenetwork.com/forum/pictur...&pictureid=780

http://knifenetwork.com/forum/pictur...&pictureid=781

http://knifenetwork.com/forum/pictur...&pictureid=783

Bah I forgot how to include images in here properly...


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Last edited by Airth; 04-18-2011 at 02:58 PM.
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antler, awesome, blade, custom, fixed blade, forge, forging, guard, hidden, knife, knives, newbie, pins, press, solder, tang


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