Hey everyone. I started building a dirk a while back. I took an old 18 inch file, ground the teeth off it and shaped it with a grinder. Because I wanted the eighteen inch blade, I threw functionality out the window and welded a 4 inch strip of mild steel for the handle. A drilled two holes in my mild steel handle for divets (or rivets, I don't remember the right word.) to hold it all together. Next, I went and bought a little chunck of Cocobolo wood. (Pricey stuff. $15 for a 12 inch piece.) Using sandpaper and a Dremel sander, I made a semi-traditional shaped handle out of the wood. For the next step, I took the handle and cut it right in half, lengthwize with a band saw.
Now here's where I messed up. When I went to carve out the insert on the handle halves for the dirk's tang to slide into, when I chipped a piece off. After a healthy amount of swearing, I whipped out the elmer's wood glue and glued it back together. I was pretty happy with the glue job, seeing as how you could hardly tell it was broken. But I decided not to take anymore chances.
So instead of carving an insert out, I sandwiched the blade tange between the two handle halves and glued it completely together with Epoxy glue. A little redneck-ish, but I figured it would hold everything together even better than rivets. (or divets.) To make it all look pretty, I painted a black stripe over the epoxy layer and painted a celtic knotwork line along the stripe.
I got stuck at the furniture. I need to make a handguard and hilt. (I think hilt is the right word. The butt-end furniture piece.) I started making the handguard with a small, 1 1/2 inch wide strip of 22 or 24 guage sheet metal. I wrapped it around the handle and shaped it accordingly. I know I can weld it, but I have two problems with this piece. One, because I didn't get the handle shape perfectly, there are going to be little gaps between the wood and the furniture piece. And two, I'm at a loss as to how to make the cap for this piece, that the blade will stick through. I hope that makes sense. Can anyone make any suggestions, or does anyone have any better ideas?
And then there's the butt-end furniture. I figured it would probably be the same as the handguard piece, except that I bought a cool little green rock to put at the end. Any suggestions on how to mount this with the butt-end furniture piece?
I'll take a picture of the knife tomorrow, so you can see for yourself the progress I've made.