I'm looking at having the handle replaced on a Shigefusa 240 kasumi gyuto. I scour the web looking for nice wood, but it's really hard to imagine what a given piece will look like on the knife. So I've set up a PowerPoint slide that allows me to do a lot of playing around with different woods on that knife. The process went as follows:
1. Take a picture of the knife and import it into PP, resize and position it.
2. Go to arizonaironwood, burlsource, eBay, etc., and download pictures of wood blocks. If a site won't let me "save" an image (like eBay), I use CaptureWiz to get it.
3. I use the IrfanView app to rotate and resize the downloaded photos, then import them into PP.
In the end I get something like the slide below, with the Shig on top and various potential handles below it.
In this next screenshot I've put the black-dyed buckeye handle on to see what it might look like:
And in this last shot I'm trying the green-dyed box elder handle on for appearance.
It's far from perfect, but it helps me a lot. I'm leaning toward the black buckeye at the moment.
1. Take a picture of the knife and import it into PP, resize and position it.
2. Go to arizonaironwood, burlsource, eBay, etc., and download pictures of wood blocks. If a site won't let me "save" an image (like eBay), I use CaptureWiz to get it.
3. I use the IrfanView app to rotate and resize the downloaded photos, then import them into PP.
In the end I get something like the slide below, with the Shig on top and various potential handles below it.
In this next screenshot I've put the black-dyed buckeye handle on to see what it might look like:
And in this last shot I'm trying the green-dyed box elder handle on for appearance.
It's far from perfect, but it helps me a lot. I'm leaning toward the black buckeye at the moment.