German hunting trousse, part XII and the unexpected problem

I settled on glueing the fork pocket with the seam inward and not to include a plate over the side pockets.  Fitting the outer facing was tricky; it had to be stretched to fit smoothly over the side pockets without leaving a lot of slack sticking out the sides.  For this reason I wet-molded it first.

To try to keep the facing from crushing the side pockets, I inserted the knife and fork.  To keep the facing smooth above the pockets and prevent the protruding rivet heads from making marks in the damp leather, I placed some small brass plates.  The space between the top of the scabbard and top of the side pockets is almost exactly two inches.

To get the facing to mold as closely to the core as possible, I used most of a bag of binder clips.  These somehow seem to have stained the back with little black spots, possibly from exposed steel on the edges reacting with the veg-tan (similar to vinegaroon).

Once the facing was dry, I trimmed to down to the straightest, closest edges I could manage using a combination of an xActo chisel point and scissors.

It was while punching the stitch holes that I remembered to add the belt slits, which have to be done before stitching or I would risk damaging the inner layer while cutting them.  This method is, again, inspired by one used on the Bruegel messer.  If I'm going to add a metal throat and a hoop supporting the top of the pockets, it's necessary to add the slits between them.

My plan was to loosely stitch the outer layer, soak it, insert the core and tighten the stitches one by one.

It proceeded according to plan except that I could only manage a single whipstitch with the length of linen thread I'd cut.  The outer layer shrank nicely against the core.  The problem of the facing above the pockets being a bit too large remains, but while unsightly, it's not too bad for me to overlook on a first attempt.

The use of two brass plates had caused a visible line across the top of the facing during the initial wet molding, so this time I added a single two-inch plate.  This did seem to help.

Unfortunately, a new problem came up at the end:  It seems that some of the hide glue I added to fix the facing in place either soaked through the wet leather or got out at the seams and onto the facing.  The glue appears to have interfered with the absorption of the spirit dye, so that repeated brushings of dye failed to get rid of the patchy appearance.  Whether this problem can be solved at this point and how, I'm not sure.

German hunting trousse, part XI

I initially intended to make a box-style wooden scabbard core for the cleaver, but after examining how the Bruegel messer scabbard is constructed and contacting Tod's Workshop, I decided to see whether I could make a similar style here.

The messer scabbard is two layers of fairly thin veg-tan.  The inner layer is unstitched, while the outer layer has a flat Z-shaped double whipstitch, unlike the double running stitch I'm used to using that leaves a ridge down the back.  The double running stitch is used because it helps keep the stitching away from the blade so that it's harder for the blade's point to catch on the stitching when resheathing.  An unstitched layer obviates that risk entirely, but I don't know how they manage to mold the leather to the blade with no stitching holding it in place.

In any event, I felt the need for stitching in the core layer, but also to keep the point at least somewhat away from the stitches.  So after measuring and cutting the leather as usual, I trimmed it until it looked like it would just barely wrap around the blade and meet in the middle, then poked stitch holes at an angle so they came out the sides of the cut edges.  I stitched with size 40 linen thread and soaked the core with alcohol.  On the suggestion of Sword Buyers' Guide poster erichofprovence, I made the core and side pockets rough side out, in order to encourage better adhesion between them and the rough inner side of the facing layer when everything gets glued together.  Because it seemed like it was going to be on the loose side, I tried to make sure it dried more snugly by warming it gently over a heater to shrink it, letting it spend plenty of time off the blade, and not wrapping the blade with tape.

The side pocket for the carving knife offered no such easy solution.  The 2-3oz. leather is too thin to poke angled holes out the edges.  A normal butt stitch would leave the thread exposed to the knife point.  A normal side welt would add unwanted bulk, and a double running center seam would create a ridge that would either prevent the pocket from lying flat against the core (if it were on the back) or be visible through the facing (if it were on the front).  What I settled on was to mold the pocket so the seam ran along the blade's spine and slightly to one side and down, so that it's not threatened by the blade's point or edge and lies flat against the core.

An interesting thing to note is that the rosin varnish, even after drying in the sun and then ageing for almost two years, still gets sticky whenever alcohol gets on it.

The side pocket for the fork was simpler, and in fact I think it's better not being molded, so the leather doesn't shrink in such a way as to prevent the tines from sliding freely in and out.  I did add a very small, thin welt at the tip, but this doesn't seem to prevent the tines from sliding between the stitches if the fork is pushed in too far.  I don't think of this as a serious problem.

For the time being, I'm instead wondering whether to turn the fork pocket with its side seam inward or outward.  The cleaver blade being a relatively narrow one, the main scabbard doesn't leave room for the knife and fork pockets to sit separately like in most hunting trousses.  Instead, they'll need to overlap.  For me the next question is which way will cause less of an unsightly ridge and allow the facing to lie most smoothly.

A separate issue is whether to include a leather plate with a pair of slots for the knife and fork to pass through, covering the mouths of the side pockets.  Real hunting cleavers normally had a metal plate (the metal being whatever steel, brass or silver the rest of the scabbard mounts were made of, attached to a worked metal hoop that went around the entire scabbard, presumably to help prevent the mouths of the side pockets from being crushed) although I've seen one that appears to be made of either wood or leather, and absent the ability to weld, I may be forced to rely on leather.  However, there may not be room for a plate here at all.

All this relates to the question of how much metal hardware I'm putting on the scabbard; the Bruegel messer's scabbard, for comparison, has none at all, and although they're from slightly different time periods, I can't help but think of the messer and trousse as forming a matching set.  If I made a chape and throat for the cleaver, I'd feel compelled to make one for the messer as well.

German hunting trousse, part X

The cleaver came together much like the accessories:  scales oiled and varnished, allowed to cure in the sun, then glued and set with mild steel pins.  No process pics this time, it was too messy.

I accidentally left the scales out overnight in what I thought was an aluminum tray.  It turns out it was non-stainless steel.  Dew collected under the scales in the morning, causing the scales to swell, the oak tannin to react with the steel and create black stains on the undersides of the scales, and the surface of the tray to rust.  Also an animal pooped in the tray, though thankfully nowhere near the scales.  The warping resided after a few days indoors.

I had earlier found that when the accessories, whose scales were attached with pitch glue, were allowed to get too hot, the glue softened and exuded out of the seams.  I attached the cleaver's scales with epoxy and set the pins while it was still liquid.  This was not a good idea, as the epoxy got onto the scales and was very difficult to wipe off.  The finish is therefore duller than it should be.  In this regard, it may have been better to use pitch glue, which would cool and harden rapidly.

The hilt is not comfortable to hold thanks to the protruding washers, but perhaps this would make for a more secure grip, or historical washers may not have been as highly domed as the ones I used.  The pins required many little taps with a light ball peen hammer to tamp down the edges of the peens and prevent them from scratching the palm of my hand.

This project is far from over.  It will require a specialized scabbard with side pockets for the accessories and custom steel mountings, and possibly a belt, before it can be considered complete.

German hunting trousse, part IX

I next returned to working on the cleaver.  I've been putting it off for a long time because of technical challenges that I was unsure of how to deal with.

Firstly, a method of how to fabricate the side ring rivet and affix it in such a way that it wouldn't rotate in the rivet hole had long eluded me.  Many of the originals have spike-shaped extensions sticking up from the rings along the bolsters which I surmise were created by sophisticated forging techniques and incorporate extra pins.  Fat chance of me accomplishing anything like that.  However, not all of them are constructed this way, and I eventually came across a post on myArmoury by Lukas Mästle-Goer which shows an alternative method:  The side guard - in his case a shell Nagel for a Rugger, but it would work just as well with a Waidpraxe's ring - has a rectangular base that fits into a slot on the face of the bolster, locking it in position.

With this understanding, I drilled a 5/8-inch hole in a bar of mild steel, cut out the ring around it with an angle grinder, and ground and filed its shank down to a round cross section 3/16 inch thick.

The other problem was no more complicated but will take longer to explain:  Most hunting cleavers of the 17th century have a finger guard on the edge side of the blade that protrudes out past the blade shoulder.  This seems to have been created in one of two ways:  Either the bolsters are forged as a single piece that semi-encloses the tang, with the two bolsters held together by the finger guard itself, or they're made in two pieces and the tang also features a protrusion that they're sandwiched on either side of.

Because I can't weld and the Crazy Crow blade has no such extension, my first attempt to deal with the problem was to create a pair of bolsters with protruding finger guards, soldered together by a small piece of filler steel.  However, this proved unfeasible.  The filler piece was a hair too thin and the tang wouldn't fit into the guard.  I tried grinding out the inside, but the solder wasn't strong enough to stand up to the vibrations and the guard fell apart.  After re-soldering and re-grinding several times and getting nowhere, I put the whole thing on hold.

Again, myArmoury came to the rescue.  At a later date, I found a post by Radovan Geist of a knife that looked a lot like the one I'm working on, although it is intended as a Bauerwehr (thus again a solid shell Nagel instead of a ring).  It even had a little un-beveled section of blade shoulder just like the Crazy Crow blade's ricasso, which Radovan used as the support for the bolsters.  Looking through my collection of hunting cleaver photos, I realized that a handful looked quite similar with small finger guards that didn't protrude past the edge of the blade.  This was the solution.  (I also copied his idea of adding a thinner pin hole to the blade shoulder so that the bolsters could be pinned there as well.)

Starting fresh, I cut two new pieces of mild steel in approximately the shape required.  Another problem soon arose:  The part of the blade that transitions from the tang to the ricasso becomes thinner, and while the transition is more-or-less flat on one face, it's curved on the other.  This meant that while one bolster could just sit as it was and be pretty much flush with the blade, the other needed to be ground on the inside to match the curve; otherwise, it would teeter across the tang's surface, leaving a large gap on one edge or another.

 

The bolster partly through shaping.  I managed to get it not quite so bad after a few more passes of the angle grinder's flap disc, but perfection eludes me.  In this project I won't feel so bad about using a modern epoxy to fill the gaps..

Once that was done, getting the profile perfect was simply a matter of glueing, drilling, and grinding the edges flush with the tang.

After that, the bolsters could be detached and rough-shaped.  Adding the slot for the ring was another tricky step:  Unwilling to risk mayhem with the aggressive angle grinder, I instead used my Dremel with a fairly small flat stone grinding disc.  This took longer but I believe reduced the chance of the slot coming out crooked.  I finished it with coarse files.

Next I added some decorative grooves freehand with needle files, then polished everything up.  Finally, it was time to peen the pins and rivet.

I epoxied first, then set the smaller pins - a cut section of 1/8-inch common nail as used throughout this project, and an annealed section of thinner finishing nail in the shoulder area.  Then I ground and polished out the dings.

 

I set the ring rivet last, after annealing, re-polishing, and shortening the shank.  To prevent the ring from being marred, I put the 5/8-inch drill bit through it and had it rest on two steel blocks with the ring between them.  The bit supported the ring and prevented it from popping out as the shank was peened.  Then I once again ground and polished the peen to be less protrusive and visible.

 

The cleaver with rough-cut oak scales and washers.  I'll be getting them closer to their finished shape and might start the scabbard over the next few months, but this is the last update I'll be sharing on the cleaver until spring, when the weather warms up enough to varnish the scales.

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.

German hunting trousse, part VI

It took a long time for me to decide what to do about the fork.  I eventually came up with a solution, sort of, because the project is now going in a somewhat different direction.  We're starting with a period two-tined fork from Crazy Crow (the buffalo horn scale version only because it's the cheapest).

The first step is to remove the scales. I first wrapped the tines in a scrap of soft leather, clamped them firmly in a vise, and ground off the ends of the pins with the angle grinder flap disc in case they were peened.  They may not have been, although making the pins shorter can't hurt with the next step.  Grinding animal horn does produce a foul odor, so it would've been worth either doing outdoors or by less aggressive means (or avoiding altogether) if possible.  Luckily, I have a basement to work in.

I next gradually jimmied the scales off the tang.  This is made much easier by the fact that they aren't secured with any kind of glue.  In fact, the stuff between the scales and tang is a greasy, grimy substance similar to oil-based clay.  That might even be what it is.  I don't know why it's there, but maybe it helps prevent rust.

There was already a tiny but noticeable gap between the tang and one scale.  I inserted an X-Acto blade tip-first, first at one end, then the middle, then closer to the bolster, and continued until the gap had opened up all along one scale.  I switched to the other scale, which was loosening up, then expanded the gap with a thicker knife blade until the scales could be yanked off.

I drew the new shape of the tang on with a paint pen, then it was time for more angle grinding, and finished up by filing the edges smooth and polishing them with grades of sandpaper.

The last step in modifying the metal part itself was to straighten the tines in a vise so that they would more easily slide into the sheath.  This was not difficult - the fork appears to be made of mild or un-hardened steel - but it did result in the tines having a slightly wavy profile.

German hunting trousse, part V

I've concluded that this unidentified steel is much harder than I'd expected.  I annealed the tang several more times, switched between different sizes of drill bits, broke four or five, and endured much screeching noises before managing to create all the small pilot holes.

In the end, I locked the blade in a vise and gradually widened the holes with a 1/8-inch round file held in a pair of pliers.  When the holes were large enough that the file slid through easily, I ran the 1/8-inch drill bit through each one from both sides, then tried to make it a shade larger with a 9/64-inch bit.  This worked for three of them, but not the remaining two.  I settled for making the holes large enough that the nickel silver pin stock would slide through without much difficulty, which is all that's really needed.

I concluded the week's work by smoothing the reshaped tang edges with a rasp, then polishing them with sandpaper up to 1500 grit and finally the Dremel's wire wheel.  The sandpaper failed to take all the rasp's scratch marks out, but they're only visible on close inspection and I'm not too ashamed.

German hunting trousse, part IV

I gave up on using the cutoff wheel and instead finished reshaping the tang with what remained of the grinder's flap disk.  So far, so good.

I finished planning the hilt with a tracing of the new tang shape.  As you can see here, the new shape leaves the original pin holes badly off-center, so a new set was required.  Luckily, I've just finished setting up a mini drill press in the basement which ought to work for this purpose...

...  but didn't, or at least not well enough.  To be frank, after how fast the flap disk reduced the edges, I expected the drill to punch through with ease like I've often done with a drill press on mild steel.  The 3/16-inch bit made the nagel hole with difficulty, but the 1/8-inch bit refused to go more than partway through.  After that, it spun and heated the tang but refused to go any deeper.  Even annealing the tang didn't help.  Now the drill bit's tip is blue and looks blunted.  I may not be able to finish this step until I pick up a replacement.

German hunting trousse, part III

Finding a useable non-custom blade for the cleaver is pretty hard without going custom.  The most common blade is a bit like a bolo machete, but shorter and much thicker.  There were many variations, of course, but from what I can find, only rarely and rather later do we see blades that look more like modern kitchen meat cleavers.  Large "chopper" knives used for heavy woodwork somewhat resemble the classic Waidpraxe, but tend to be pricier than I want for this project.

Luckily, in my searches I stumbled across two examples that could serve as models.  One is archived at Hermann Historica and the other at Bonham's; both are identified as Saxon (in the sense of originating from Saxony), mid-17th century, and have unusually narrow blades with parallel edges.  The Bonham's example has a dropped point.

As it happens, Crazy Crow sells a large blade with a similar profile.  It's far from perfect; it's faintly bowed, lacks a fuller, and as a cleaver, it could stand to be a millimeter or two thicker.  Also, the company offers no guarantees on the steel or heat-treatment of the Indian-made lineups in this price bracket (which include the belduque I'm using in this project as a by-knife).  But its simple geometry and profile make it a unique design, and probably the best I'm going to get without going custom.  The fact that the rifleman blade has a similar cross section and the same finish as the belduque is fortuitous.

The first step in modifying it is to give its grip the classic Waidpraxe profile.  To begin with, I marked it up as you can see above.

I first attacked the tang with the scroll saw, but it wanted nothing to do with this and I was afraid all I'd accomplish would be wearing out the saw blade.  Instead, I've turned to the angle grinder, which is less suited for fine work like this but much more powerful.  Its flap disk ate away the corners of the butt end in seconds.

This kind of heavy work is what results in the blade "burning" or losing its heat treatment, which you can see near the third rivet hole where the steel is turning brown.  Clearly, I will have to proceed slowly and (if possible) use two clamps as heat sinks.

With any luck, next update in a week or two.

German hunting trousse, part II

Some German hunting knives and other equipment of the period with non-ferrous hardware had applied flanges and I wasted much time debating with myself about whether this was something I wanted to try.  In the end I decided it would be too easy to screw up.

I stained, thinned down and shaped the ash scales, then finished them with linseed oil.  The oil, unfortunately, brought out the wood grain strongly, and I don't think anyone giving these grips a close look in person would mistake them for antler.  A better choice than ash might be holly, plain maple, or even light-colored poplar, although knifemakers seem to consider poplar a poor choice due to its softness (it's said to dent much too easily unless saturated in stabilizer).

In the meanwhile there were also the washers to make.  Judging from photos of antiques, the smaller pieces of a hunting trousse most often had one highly-domed rivet or a pin set with a pair of washers at the top of the tang and simple pins for the rest, while the cleaver would usually have its scales attached entirely with domed rivets or washers.  Since I can't get solid nickel silver rivets that are just right, the heads have to be attached separately.  Radovan Geist suggested using upholstery tacks with the pins cut off and holes drilled in the middle, which he used on his amazing 17th-century Jagdmesser earlier this year, but previous experience has shown that I'm no good at keeping circular metal objects from spinning while drilling the middle.  Kellam Knives also sells premade rivet heads which would be perfect for this use; it's just that two each of them on the knife, fork and bodkin plus up to ten for the cleaver would come to almost $56 and I didn't want to spend that much.

Instead, I fabricated some washers from a half-inch strip of 14-gauge nickel silver.  First I marked off half-inch segments, then knocked a dent in the middle of each with a nail, to act as a pilot hole.

 The blackened end of the strip was from my attempt to anneal it.  This doesn't work with nickel silver like it does with brass.

The holes were drilled thusly:  I set the nickel strip on a board and hammered escutcheon pins into the wood around it so that the pin shafts prevented the strip from spinning around and the heads would keep it from flipping outward.  This worked well enough, but for some reason I couldn't keep the holes centered:  Almost all of them wound up to one side - the same side, no matter how I tried to correct the drill's angle.  This is one of the many, many times I regret not having space or money for a drill press.

After cutting the washer blanks into octagons, I soldered two of them onto the ends of a scrap of brass rod, then used a stone Dremel bit to grind them round and slightly domed (for which reason it was important to get the thickest nickel stock I could find).  At first I used low-temperature solder paste, but this proved too weak, and the washers broke free while being ground.  I tried again with silver solder, which worked, although it has its own drawback in that the solder is so strong that I could only remove the washers from the rod by re-melting the solder.  I heated the washers with a blowtorch while holding the rod with a pair of heavy pliers.  When the washers were red-hot, I grabbed another pair of pliers in my other hand to quickly pry them off.

After further cleanup with files and then polishing, the washers were ready to attach.  I set the scales with epoxy and nickel silver pins in the usual fashion.  Because nickel silver doesn't anneal (or at least I haven't yet figured out how to do so), the kind of plastic deformation involved in peening the pins is, well, harder.  Still, it's not a huge undertaking.

Setting the pins causes some metallic discoloration of the surrounding wood where the hammer hits it, which I have to then sand, brush the sawdust off of, and oil one more time.  The pin with the washers at the end was by far the easiest one to set, which makes me wonder why all such knives didn't have washers on all the pins.

I haven't made a sheath for this knife.  If all goes well, it'll wind up not as a belt knife but carried in a cleaver sheath side pocket alongside its siblings.

German hunting trousse, part I

I've recently developed an interest in acquiring an old German hunting trousse of the type that was used in 17th and 18th centuries.  These were sets of culinary tools used in the processing of big game such as deer and boar.  Typically a trousse would include a Waidblatt or Waidpraxe (hunting cleaver), one or two by-knives, and a carving fork and/or an awl-like tool, the function of which is variously believed to be either a simpler version of a fork or a sharpening steel.  These would all have matching hilts.  Since they were tools of aristocrats (as the saying went, "Das Jagen/Ist Ein/altes Recht/es gehöret/für den Adel/und Sein/geschlecht"), they were rather ornate, often with silver furniture.

I have, as yet, no idea where to acquire blanks for the cleaver, awl or fork (standard carving forks are much too large, and replica 18th-century table forks have tines that are too short and necks that are too long).  The by-knife would also be a little uncertain.  The flat-tanged varieties of traditional Jagdnicker strongly resemble it, but have thickened shoulders that would be difficult to grind away cleanly.

An alternative presented itself, however.  It is marketed as a "mini" version of a Spanish belduque.  Whether it's an accurate replica of that is neither here nor there as far as my purposes are concerned, but I had a gift card to Amazon, so it's as good a choice as any.  And that's why this is where I'm starting the project.

The belduque arrived with a somewhat loose-fitting sheath, a full-bellied grip with horn scales, and a rather poor secondary bevel which is not really visible in my photos.  The blade is 3mm thick at the shoulder, about half again more than the heaviest modern paring knives I've handled, with much less distal taper.  I like this because I figure if the heat-treatment is poor on this cheap knife, the thicker blade will ameliorate it somewhat.

Another thing to note is that the bolster, while it may look deep yellow in the catalogue photo, actually appears to be nickel silver (also known as German silver), an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel with only a faint yellowish tinge.  This isn't a bad thing, since nickel silver, as its name implies, looks a lot like real silver (though more durable and less prone to ugly tarnish) and the original hunting trousses often had silver furniture, while I've never seen one with brass.  It does, however, make obtaining furniture a little more complicated and expensive.

Obviously, the first thing to do was get rid of the scales.  I ground off the ends of the pins, then gradually wedged an X-Acto blade between the scales and the tang, and then thicker blades until the scales were forced off.

You don't get to see the removed scales, since I threw them out weeks ago.

The original by-knives rarely if ever had bellied grips; indeed, to judge by the many photos I've looked at, straight-sided grips are one of the distinguishing features between these and modern ones.  So some trimming is in order.

I set the tang in a heavy vise and erased the markered edges with an angle grinder.  Grinding metal generates a lot of heat, enough to anneal the blade (i.e., ruin the heat-treatment) if left unchecked, and if I were working on the blade I would tend to pause frequently and rub the blade down with an ice cube.  But the vise, which is in essence two big chunks of steel, acts as a heat sink -- when I'd finished grinding, the tang was only slightly warmed.  Also, the vise prevents me from accidentally grinding off too much.

Found some nickel silver rods on eBay at a slight discount because they're tarnished...  I don't know why that matters because it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes with some Brasso to deal with it, but in this project even polishing is redundant since only the very ends will even be visible.  Anyway, luckily I was able to get more than enough for the entire project and one or two more all at once.

The correct material for the scales is deer antler, but I hate working with antler.  It's foul-smelling and cracks too easily for my tastes.  Instead I'm using some yellow ash.

The ash is cut, shaped and textured with various rotary tool attachments.  The cutting wheel really isn't the right tool for this job, as it breaks much too easily, and explosively, as well as producing a ton of smoke.  But in the absence of a power saw, this was the fastest way to get the job done, and I am nothing if not impatient about certain tasks.

I wrapped up today's work by applying wood stain to the textured tops of the scales.  I intend to let it dry for a week or so, then sand the scales to their final shape.  With any luck, the sanding will remove most of the stain, leaving color only in the grooves, and provide a look similar to genuine antler.