Hey thanks for the comments all!
Beautiful work! Any growing pains that you went through as you learned how to make wa-handles?
I've tried and finished a grand total of 4 Wa handles:
- First one was on my first J knife. I bought some buffalo horn on amazon which serves as a ferrule to a yellowheart handle. it came out surprisingly well. i didn't do mortise/tenon, in the name of simplicity. figured that the tang would keep it all together. not quite: wood nor horn is stabilized. there's a small gap between the two. but, we still have it. looks good and is comfortable
- Second one is above with blackwood. First try with mortise / tenon. i thought i was clever to make the tenon same width as tang (near heel). It became an issue because i forced the blade into the handle a bit too aggressively and it created some pressure against the maple ferrule which in turn split, ever so slightly. always bugged me, but kept it that way for a while anyway. didn't use it much, but mostly because (come to find out) nakiris aren't my thing. this one had an exposed tenon, which together with tenon dimension=tang dimension was my mistake...not to mention lack of patience or precision
- Third one is in a recent post (Toyama Noborikoi). experiences above lead me to hidden mortise and tenon. Instead of a "collar", it's more of a "hat". it feels bullet proof. My mistake here was to finalize the tang hole only after all the pieces had been glued up. And since i didn't leave enough play in the handle void, it took a lot of work to get it right. came out well, but took longer than necessary
- Last one is with jobillo, above. this time, i fit the ferrule cap to tang before being glued to rest of handle. again, very solid. but this time, much much quicker.
I probably
could have learned more quickly by reading a bit more on the forum about how the experts have done it. that's for the less stubborn, more reasonable forum member. i tend to learn best by trying stuff and being ok with mistakes along the way.
fun for me to look back, thanks Pete!
