Attaching Scales

[SmokeyJay]

Ok, so i am about to try my first knife that i will be putting a handle on. The stock steel i'm using is 3/16" and it will be a full tang knife so i'm going to put scales on it for the handle. My question is what is the best way to go about attaching the scales. I figured i would epoxy them on, but do i need to add pins/screws? I've never make a knife with a handle yet so not sure what i'm doing. What size pins/screws do i need or how to i calculate the size? Thanks in advance for any help!!!

[SVanderkolff]

Not sure what the best way to do it is but here is what I do. First off you will need some holes in the tang so your epoxy has something to grab and so the epoxy can bind both sides of the handle together. I also use pins. Normally I will use 1/8" pins but depending on the size of the knife you may want to go bigger or smaller and usually 2 or 4 pins is sufficient. The pins are there to provide shear strength so it really doesn't mattter how big they are as you will never shear through even a 1/16 pin without totally destroying the knife. I use the 24 hour cure epoxy, it seems to have better holding strength than the instant or 5 minute stuff. Make sue you walk through all the steps ahead of time otherwise you may have trouble drilling your pin holes if you have epoxied the whole knife first.
Not sure if you can follow that but hope it helps.
Steve

[Ray Rogers]

There are many ways to skin that cat and Steve has explained one way. In addition to pins there are Loveless bolts, Corby bolts, cutlery rivets to name the most popular methods. One thing I would not do is try to use epoxy by itself - that just won't fly for most people.

What you need to do is get some catalogs from the knife supply places like Sheffields, or Jantz. Since these guys sell supplies for all the various things knife makers do the items they have for sale is what we use (there's the answer to your what size question). They also sell multiple solutions to most of our needs so they will have all of those bolts and pins I mentioned. Since all of these things are pictured in the catalog you can quickly understand how they are to be used. In many cases, the catalogs include small picture tutorials of how to use various items - in particular, how to attach the various styles of handles.

Of course, catalogs will also answer questions on how to finish the parts of a knife, what tools to use for specific steps of knife making, the advantages of one method over another for some things....in other words about 80% of all the most common newbie questions. And, of course, you not only get the answer but you also get to compare costs and you're in the right place to order a product once you have decided what you need.

Get the catalogs ....

[graveyard]

theres a way to make handels with pins that ore un seen .befor you H/T your blade drill your holes for pins then wen you have your handels shaped mostly finished drill the insides to match pins not all the way trow epoxy the pins in knife ruff up the handels inside.dry fit a couple times befor epoxy,if it fits were you look like youve used no pins then epoxy the pin help to hold it

[Doug Lester]

Some of the online knife making supply houses also have tutorials on various elements of knife making that are good to check out. It's also surprising what you can find on YouTube.

Doug