Creating a bush knife with layered wood handle

Step 4 Welding and polishing

This seems like a good point to practise my MIG welding skills, as you are about to see, they need a little more work.

The hilt needs to be welded in place, if you have a perfect fit, then only weld from 'below'. But if, like me, the slot is a little larger than the tang, weld all around and grind down the excess metal afterwards.

At this point I had the idea of using a threaded rod and a nut to hold the handle in place, so I cut a slot from the end of the tang, and welded a length of threaded rod (a.k.a, bolt with head chopped off) in place.

While the handle is still bare metal, you may want to clamp it in a vice and start the long process of filing/sanding/polishing the balde. Just work through the grades of (glass) sand paper, finishing with a wet fine grain texture.
I spent a few hours doing this, but didn't get anywhere near a perfect finish. In the end I decided that it was a working knife, not a display piece, so a mirror finish wasn't necessary.

Comments

[strangebike]

welding the tang on destroys any tempering you have right were you want to loose it least. with the re-enactment weapons we make and use we just make it a good fit and not bother welding it. It's completely possible to make a knife without the need for a welder but it does make finishing the pommels a fair sight easier.