OneStaple
Well-Known Member
Hey all,
I recently picked up an old 165mm carbon nakiri (I like nakiris for some reason) on ebay, primarily to practice my sharpening skills so I don't mess up my knives from Japanese Knife Imports. Well, I really liked this knife when it came. It's super thin, seems to be in great shape, and is obviously forged with hammer marks in the upper half.
The old handle, while in good shape and comfortable, was loose and there was some rust on the tang. I debated cleaning it up and epoxying it back on, but decided to have some fun with some desert ironwood that I recently dragged home.
So this is my first wa handle build ever. I'm really happy with how it turned out and wanted to share my process. Oh, my main hobby is woodworking, by the way.
Comments/feedback welcome!
Thanks,
Tyler
This is what I started with. Old knife (supposedly followed a military guy home from Japan 40+ years ago. Seemed to be part of his estate that was being sold off.
Pictures of the chunk of ironwood that I started with. I wanted that burl! Also had no clue how it would look or if there would be cracks.
The piece of ironwood cut to rough shape (about 1-1/8"x1-1/8"x4.5"), along with another piece of burl wood that I found in the shop that was a good match. I have no clue what type of wood it is. Maybe olivewood? You can also see the rust on the tang (later wire brushed off).
1/2" dowel that I put in the handle. This allowed me to use a 1/2" brad point bit to drill holes in the handle and bolster (not all the way through) and then fill them in to hold the tang steady. I made the dowel much longer than it needed to be because I wanted to remove more of the heavy ironwood and fill it with the lighter dowel wood (birch, if I remember right). The tang was thicker toward the top than a single kerf thickness on my table saw, so I cut more toward the top and cleaned it up with a bandsaw. A chisel would work just as well.
Some markings on the end as a guide for drilling. I actually drilled slightly off center (the mark just above the center cross) to try to avoid some pits and get more burl. The layout lines helped show what the taper would be at the end.
Hole drilled in the ironwood. Again, purposely off center from my layout lines slightly. You can also see the pilot hole in the bolster wood.
The hole in the bolster piece. The bolster piece is about 1-1/8" long. The hole goes through all but about the last 3/8".
Dry fitting.
More dry fitting. The bolster piece is purposely offset only because I wanted to see if I could save some of the cut-offs for other projects. Alas, I think they're too small.
I drilled holes slightly undersized in the bolster piece to clear out the bulk of the wood. My tang had a weird shape and taper from top to bottom, so my layout lines reflect this. The wood was cut to the layout lines with a carving knife (shown). Lots of test fitting to get it right and see where there was interference between the tang and wood.
Dry fitting to test.
Before gluing, I put the blade in the handle and made sure it lined up nicely. That way I knew the dowel was in the right position. I put a light coating of regular (not 5-minute) epoxy on the dowel, then inserted it into the ironwood. I was careful to only add a little, since I didn't want squeeze out to interfer with the slot for the tang. Same with placing the bolster piece on top of the ironwood and dowel. Then I carefully clamped it all together to let it dry completely.
After the glue dried, I cut the taper. I knew what I wanted my final dimensions to be, so some basic trig told me how much of a taper I needed. To created the taper, I stacked blue tape at one end of the handle until I had the thickness I needed. The blue tape is somewhat compressable, so I had to make sure I kept even pressure against the fence while cutting, and did similar amounts of pressure for each cut. When cutting the opposite side, I put twice as much stacked tape on (since an already-cut taper would be against the fence. My original layout lines helped, as you'll want to keep the tang hole centered.
The four sides cut off. Now the handle is tapered.
On to the router to add the bevels. A lot of people do this on a disc or belt sander, but I opted for the router. For me, I like the added precision/control. I basically took light cuts, doing all four corners before increasing the cut slightly. I kept doing this until it looked right. I also found that if the ironwood was on the back end of the cut, it chipped out slightly, whereas the olivewood didn't. So I always made sure the olivewood was on the back end of the cut. If both woods chipped out, I would have cut half the length, then turned the handle around and cut the other half. Hopefully that makes sense.
The final cross-section and tang hole. Yes, the tang hole is slightly off center. The tang bulges more on one side, so the hole has to be slightly off-center for the blade to be straight with the handle.
Dry fit. The blade has not been cleaned up at all (other than the tang).
I didn't get pictures of the next few steps since there's not much to show. Next, I filled some of the small cracks/voids in the ironwood, which is common especially near burls. I tried a couple different methods with scrap pieces. In the end, I mixed saw dust (created with one of the off-cuts from the handle and 180-grit sandpaper) mixed into epoxy until it almost wouldn't hold anymore. That was put into the cracks/voids and later sanded smooth.
Then I sanded like crazy! This was all done by hand. My steps were:
-180 grit. Used to get rid of any machine marks and (carefully) round over edges. It also made the epoxy flat with the surrounding wood. Actually, the bulk of the epoxy sitting above the wood was carefully shaved off with a sharp chisel.
-220 grit
-320 grit wet/dry, used with mineral spirits.
-600 grit wet/dry, used with mineral spirits
-1000 grit wet/dry, used with mineral spirits
-1500 grit wet/dry, used with Minwax wipe-on poly (gloss). I didn't know how porous the olivewood (or whatever wood it is) would be, so I wanted a little bit of a real finish. After sanding it in, I wiped off all the excess with a paper towel and let it dry for a couple days.
-Very fine buffing wax, often used to put a gloss finish on wood turnings. The brand I used was HUT PPP's Step II cream colored bar. I'm sure others would work.
Then I wrapped the entire knife in blue painter's tape in preparation for epoxying the blade into the handle. I left a tiny gap around the tang. After mixing the epoxy (again, stuff that doesn't start to set for 45 minutes), I carefully dripped it into the handle's hole until I had enough in there that inserting the tang created a little bit of squeeze out all around. After I lined up the blade with the handle, I wiped off the squeeze out with a paper towel, removed the blue painter's tape, carefully wiped off any additionaly epoxy spots, and let the epoxy dry. I found that I had to come back the next day and add a little more epoxy in the gap, as it shrunk as it dried and I didn't want a spot for food to get stuck. I used a similar process to the first time.
Very lightly put the handle in a clamp just to keep it upright while drying. There are plenty of other methods to do this, but it's what I could come up with quickly.
Final handle and knife! Final dimensions were 23.6mm x 21.1mm at the back, 21.4mm x 17.6mm at the front, and 135.2mm long. I had been aiming for 24.2mm x 21.1mm at the back, 22.7mm x 18.8mm at the front, and 135mm long. That was based on reading as many dimensions online as I could find and averaging them together. I ended up close, but not exact. It's tough to account for sanding, but I'm happy with it and it's quite comfy.
I also cleaned up the blade a bit, being careful not to remove the dark part. And I sharpend it up, removing some small chips along the length of the edge. I can't wait to start using it!
Hope you enjoyed this and learned something!
Top
Side
Side
Bottom
I recently picked up an old 165mm carbon nakiri (I like nakiris for some reason) on ebay, primarily to practice my sharpening skills so I don't mess up my knives from Japanese Knife Imports. Well, I really liked this knife when it came. It's super thin, seems to be in great shape, and is obviously forged with hammer marks in the upper half.
The old handle, while in good shape and comfortable, was loose and there was some rust on the tang. I debated cleaning it up and epoxying it back on, but decided to have some fun with some desert ironwood that I recently dragged home.
So this is my first wa handle build ever. I'm really happy with how it turned out and wanted to share my process. Oh, my main hobby is woodworking, by the way.
Comments/feedback welcome!
Thanks,
Tyler
This is what I started with. Old knife (supposedly followed a military guy home from Japan 40+ years ago. Seemed to be part of his estate that was being sold off.
Pictures of the chunk of ironwood that I started with. I wanted that burl! Also had no clue how it would look or if there would be cracks.
The piece of ironwood cut to rough shape (about 1-1/8"x1-1/8"x4.5"), along with another piece of burl wood that I found in the shop that was a good match. I have no clue what type of wood it is. Maybe olivewood? You can also see the rust on the tang (later wire brushed off).
1/2" dowel that I put in the handle. This allowed me to use a 1/2" brad point bit to drill holes in the handle and bolster (not all the way through) and then fill them in to hold the tang steady. I made the dowel much longer than it needed to be because I wanted to remove more of the heavy ironwood and fill it with the lighter dowel wood (birch, if I remember right). The tang was thicker toward the top than a single kerf thickness on my table saw, so I cut more toward the top and cleaned it up with a bandsaw. A chisel would work just as well.
Some markings on the end as a guide for drilling. I actually drilled slightly off center (the mark just above the center cross) to try to avoid some pits and get more burl. The layout lines helped show what the taper would be at the end.
Hole drilled in the ironwood. Again, purposely off center from my layout lines slightly. You can also see the pilot hole in the bolster wood.
The hole in the bolster piece. The bolster piece is about 1-1/8" long. The hole goes through all but about the last 3/8".
Dry fitting.
More dry fitting. The bolster piece is purposely offset only because I wanted to see if I could save some of the cut-offs for other projects. Alas, I think they're too small.
I drilled holes slightly undersized in the bolster piece to clear out the bulk of the wood. My tang had a weird shape and taper from top to bottom, so my layout lines reflect this. The wood was cut to the layout lines with a carving knife (shown). Lots of test fitting to get it right and see where there was interference between the tang and wood.
Dry fitting to test.
Before gluing, I put the blade in the handle and made sure it lined up nicely. That way I knew the dowel was in the right position. I put a light coating of regular (not 5-minute) epoxy on the dowel, then inserted it into the ironwood. I was careful to only add a little, since I didn't want squeeze out to interfer with the slot for the tang. Same with placing the bolster piece on top of the ironwood and dowel. Then I carefully clamped it all together to let it dry completely.
After the glue dried, I cut the taper. I knew what I wanted my final dimensions to be, so some basic trig told me how much of a taper I needed. To created the taper, I stacked blue tape at one end of the handle until I had the thickness I needed. The blue tape is somewhat compressable, so I had to make sure I kept even pressure against the fence while cutting, and did similar amounts of pressure for each cut. When cutting the opposite side, I put twice as much stacked tape on (since an already-cut taper would be against the fence. My original layout lines helped, as you'll want to keep the tang hole centered.
The four sides cut off. Now the handle is tapered.
On to the router to add the bevels. A lot of people do this on a disc or belt sander, but I opted for the router. For me, I like the added precision/control. I basically took light cuts, doing all four corners before increasing the cut slightly. I kept doing this until it looked right. I also found that if the ironwood was on the back end of the cut, it chipped out slightly, whereas the olivewood didn't. So I always made sure the olivewood was on the back end of the cut. If both woods chipped out, I would have cut half the length, then turned the handle around and cut the other half. Hopefully that makes sense.
The final cross-section and tang hole. Yes, the tang hole is slightly off center. The tang bulges more on one side, so the hole has to be slightly off-center for the blade to be straight with the handle.
Dry fit. The blade has not been cleaned up at all (other than the tang).
I didn't get pictures of the next few steps since there's not much to show. Next, I filled some of the small cracks/voids in the ironwood, which is common especially near burls. I tried a couple different methods with scrap pieces. In the end, I mixed saw dust (created with one of the off-cuts from the handle and 180-grit sandpaper) mixed into epoxy until it almost wouldn't hold anymore. That was put into the cracks/voids and later sanded smooth.
Then I sanded like crazy! This was all done by hand. My steps were:
-180 grit. Used to get rid of any machine marks and (carefully) round over edges. It also made the epoxy flat with the surrounding wood. Actually, the bulk of the epoxy sitting above the wood was carefully shaved off with a sharp chisel.
-220 grit
-320 grit wet/dry, used with mineral spirits.
-600 grit wet/dry, used with mineral spirits
-1000 grit wet/dry, used with mineral spirits
-1500 grit wet/dry, used with Minwax wipe-on poly (gloss). I didn't know how porous the olivewood (or whatever wood it is) would be, so I wanted a little bit of a real finish. After sanding it in, I wiped off all the excess with a paper towel and let it dry for a couple days.
-Very fine buffing wax, often used to put a gloss finish on wood turnings. The brand I used was HUT PPP's Step II cream colored bar. I'm sure others would work.
Then I wrapped the entire knife in blue painter's tape in preparation for epoxying the blade into the handle. I left a tiny gap around the tang. After mixing the epoxy (again, stuff that doesn't start to set for 45 minutes), I carefully dripped it into the handle's hole until I had enough in there that inserting the tang created a little bit of squeeze out all around. After I lined up the blade with the handle, I wiped off the squeeze out with a paper towel, removed the blue painter's tape, carefully wiped off any additionaly epoxy spots, and let the epoxy dry. I found that I had to come back the next day and add a little more epoxy in the gap, as it shrunk as it dried and I didn't want a spot for food to get stuck. I used a similar process to the first time.
Very lightly put the handle in a clamp just to keep it upright while drying. There are plenty of other methods to do this, but it's what I could come up with quickly.
Final handle and knife! Final dimensions were 23.6mm x 21.1mm at the back, 21.4mm x 17.6mm at the front, and 135.2mm long. I had been aiming for 24.2mm x 21.1mm at the back, 22.7mm x 18.8mm at the front, and 135mm long. That was based on reading as many dimensions online as I could find and averaging them together. I ended up close, but not exact. It's tough to account for sanding, but I'm happy with it and it's quite comfy.
I also cleaned up the blade a bit, being careful not to remove the dark part. And I sharpend it up, removing some small chips along the length of the edge. I can't wait to start using it!
Hope you enjoyed this and learned something!
Top
Side
Side
Bottom
