Ray Rogers Handcrafted Knives

Chapter 6

(17) The sandich, roughly ground into final shape

(18) Most of the micarta is removed, leaving only the spine

(19) Punching out the nylotron washers

The handle begins to really take shape as we grind the sandwich according to the outline drawn on the scale (17). We now have something that feels like a knife handle but it's solid - no room to put the blade inside. Using the blade as a guide we cut away all the micarta except the part that contains the screw holes for the back of the handle - the spine (18). At this point the blade can be mounted inside the handle but it is a very loose fit. That's because the blade is about 1/8th inch thick and the spine was 3/16ths. In picture (19) you see the very manual process involved in punching out the nylotron washers that will fill the gap and take up the slop. It is desirable for the washers to be as thin as possible, and in fact, they are only about .010 thick. This means that even after the washers are added there remains a bit of slop that is the difference between the thickness of the blade plus the two washers and the thickness of the spine. After a little arithmetic and careful measurment the thickness of the spine is reduced to match. The result is that everything stays parallel and the knife stays thin.

Next Chapter

Back To Main Page

Comments? Send me a note at:

Ray Rogers Handcrafted Knives