wa handle WIP - 150 petty

Here’s a wa handle work in progress in the manner I’ve been doing my last few handles. Sorry for the crappy basement pics. Hope you find it helpful

Materials used: African blackwood, copper spacer material, avonite, ½” oak dowel, knife. Missing from the picture: gorilla (epoxy) glue.


I slice the dowel with a chop saw, then file out until I fit the tang


After coring the blackwood, and drilling copper and avonite with ½” bit (all with drill press), I make sure they dry fit


The most time consuming part for me is fitting the tang correctly to the ferrule...well worthwhile if done right. I start with one small pilot hole only and work it out slowly with a small file




Clamped and glued overnight. I use a flat scrap piece of wood to make sure dowel and tang slot stay aligned during gluing


24 hrs later, I roughly sand it down (with 80 grit, on ridgid benchtop sander) until square/parallel with tang slot

Still at 80 grit, I taper the (square section) handle down toward the ferrule, then sand in the octagonal section using a 45degree wedge (sorry no pics)
I hand sand 120-400-600 progression
Then do 2 coats watco teak oil with a paper towel, amd wipe it “dry” after 75mins
24 hrs later, tang gets epoxied into handle
24 hrs after that, handle gets buffed using howard’s feed-n-wax with a buffing drill attachment (while knife is in vise)

awesome wip and an awesome handle!

:goodpost:lus1::ubersexy:

Excellent work. The proportions are spot on and the materials work well together.

Very nice looking handle you made there.

Pretty cool stuff.

Hey, glad you like it. Much appreciate the comments!

I love seeing the steps. You just settled a longstanding question I had on setting up those eastern handles. Great work! I'll be looking out for your others.

Well done! Like the proportions.

Handle turned out great. Nice work.

Very well done. What's the best way to create the taper on the handle?

thanks folks!

Astinos said:

I love seeing the steps. You just settled a longstanding question I had on setting up those eastern handles. Great work! I'll be looking out for your others.

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I'm glad it helps. Many ways to do these. This is my current preferred...more little steps and little pieces, less likely to make "catastrophic" mistakes.

KnifNerd said:

Very well done. What's the best way to create the taper on the handle?

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i use a bench sander: apply more pressure on the ferrule end. I sometimes mark the ends for a guide, but eyeballed it on this one

beauty I want to own it

Thanks for detailed pictures, i'm thinking about making my first handle, and this helps a lot.