German hunting trousse, part VIII

The knife is a traditional Jagnicker blade of a type that originated in the 19th century.  It strongly resembles earlier forms, but has noticeable differences.

Using my trusty angle grinder, I reduced the size of the bird's-head, flattened the grip belly, and ground away as much of the finger guard as I felt comfortable removing.  The slight bolster left behind is still not historically accurate, but I've resolved to live with it.  I then applied the scales, pins and washers as with the fork.

I haven't thrown away the old belduque blade; in fact, I already have a project in mind for it.

The set so far.  You'll notice the sanded-down edges of the scales are much paler; this should be resolved when I get to varnishing.

German hunting trousse, part VII

Remember seventeen months ago when I said that this project is going in a somewhat different direction?  Now that the interminable preparations for Plataea 2022 are behind me, I can show you what I meant by that.

I'd never been satisfied with the original start of the project, using ash that had been textured and stained to resemble antler and then glazed with a modern wood finish.  The homemade nickel silver washers always turned out uneven and didn't look like historical examples.  They were also difficult to drill and the pins were difficult to peen, which didn't bode well for the idea of making nickel silver fittings for the cleaver.

Wanting to use more historical materials but still not wanting to rely on genuine antler, I've decided to just make the scales out of a good honest wood that isn't pretending to be something it's not but still has a rustic look in the same vein as antler.  I selected white oak, which is the preferred oak for cutlery, being much less porous than the red oak commonly sold in the States and (so I read) more similar to European oak.  For this purpose I ordered 1/4-inch scales for the cleaver and 1/8-inch scales for the accessory pieces.  I'm finishing them with linseed oil and historical rosin varnish.  These give the wood a richer, more yellowish color than it originally had.

Henceforth, all fittings except for the washers are going to be steel instead of nickel, with pins cut from 1/8-inch common nails.  The accessory pieces have forged bolsters while the cleaver will have a guard and nagel cut from 1/4-inch mild steel.

For the washers I gave Radovan Geist's method of using upholstery tack heads another try.  This time I drove the tacks into a block of wood, used my Dremel round cutter to grind a pit in the exact middle of the tack to prevent the drill from slipping off-center, and proceeded with the drill press.  I then removed the tacks, pried out the loosened shanks, and gripped the tack head's edges with a pair of pliers as I finished drilling out the hole.  The tack heads often seized on the drill bit, causing them to spin around in the pliers and be badly scratched on the sides, and the drill bit often wandered off-center despite my best efforts, but thankfully upholstery tacks are cheap and I could give it plenty of tries until I got enough washers for the project.  Even the edges of the washers that didn't get unuseably scratched often required a little cleanup with a finetoothed needle file.  Finally, I've used the large attachment of a line snap setter to roll up the sharp edges of metal that stick downward inside the washers.  It's a lot of work, but the result is a much, much more professional washer than I could have fabricated from metal stock.

After the varnish had cured on the first set of scales, I attached them with pitch glue, drilled, used an X-Acto to trim the scale edges flush with the fork's tang, sanded the scales round again, and just this afternoon I set the pins.  There is a stainless steel washer under each domed washer to try to reinforce it from collapsing during the peening process.  I don't know if this helped but they don't seem to have been flattened.

I sanded out some of the dings that resulted from peening, and have reapplied linseed oil and will be re-varnishing the scales over the next week or two.  The knife should go pretty much the same way.