Hi all,

With your advise I'm putting together the sgain dubh. I'm doing this from a perspective from a hobbyist knifemaker. If I get into to much detail let me know. I've been making knives for about 10 years and I sometimes get a bit carried away. I also know that there are several makers who are way more skilled than I am but I figure than most hobbyists like me are always looking for new tips. Excuse the mess it's a shop not a kitchen

I started a new thread for the journey on it's way -

I wanted a hunting style sgain dubh so I decided to go with an antler handle. I know sambar stag has very little pith. While I want something to go with a outfit for Ren Fairs I'm not an absolute slave to period correctness so I will dress it up a little with some spacing materials. I started with a stainless since I have a kiln to do my own air-hardening heat treat. I chose ATS-34 since it's a good steel, not to expensive and will more than hold up to the limited use this nice

Here's the main equipment of my shop (the garage). The main work horses are the bandsaw, 12" disc and 2"x72" belt grinder.

The bandsaws, a metal and wood cutting -



My 12" disc sander. I order special metal cutting discs from a supplier. The ones from Sears are for wood and don't last more than a couple seconds on steel. I do a lot of roughing and flattening on this. The tool on the table is a magnet used for holding the steel. Three stitches and a lose of a pint of blood taught me a valuable lesson there -



The machine that is central to most makers is a 2x72 belt sander. Mine is a KMG, one of the few designed specifically for knifemaking. Here is it with the platen attachment. This is the platform I use for my blades as I flat grind vs. hollow grinding on wheels-



Here's some of the other attachments for it. A small wheel for tight areas and a slack belt for soft curves -



A couple miscellaneous tool. My kiln I use for heat treating and a specialized vise for holding the blade during sanding -