randylarsen
New Member
Okay, so this won't be much of a tutorial, since I didn't take pics along the way. But I did some things differently than most, so thought this might be the best place to put the pics of my build-out of the Bulldog.
The titanium liners seemed pretty thick to me, so I decided to try making integral bolsters. Basically, I milled out the area between the bolsters in which to inset the Ram's Horn handle material. This was my first attempt to mill titanium, and it was not as bad as I had expected. I've got the littlemachineshop version of the Sieg X2 mill, and it handled it just fine.
For the blade, I did a high hollow grind, finishing the point with a very short clip. Thumb stud is one from knifekits.com, concentric circles. I tried to carry that theme to the pivot head, and used a lathe to cut concentric circles in that as well.
The Ram's horn turned out nice, I think. I bought a rack on e-bay for practically nothing. The stuff is fairly easy, though smelly, to process. Just cut in usable sizes, boil it for 15 minutes or so (the smelly part, I did it outside), then press in a vise between two boards to flat. It tends to curl if you don't use it right away, but can be re-flattened with another boil.
The other different thing I did was make a thong hole out of titanium tube. I used the flaring tool from USAKnifemaker to flare the ends and set it in the tong holes. It is in there good and tight. Since the pics were taken I've added a braided leather lanyard, with a little silver dohickey bead.
I also used the Tung Carb Carbidizer from USAKnifemaker to put a layer of tungsten on the surfaces of the liner lock and blade. That tool is really worth it when it saves a blade after you've taken just a hair too much off a lock or blade, or to really fine-tune a button lock. Seems you can put a couple thou down with that no sweat.
The other thing that is different is that I jeweled the inside of the handles and then anodized the titanium with a rainbow effect. You can't really see it in these photos, so I'll take some more, but when you look inside the knife there is a colorful surprise.
So that's it, not much in the way of a tutorial, I'll try to think ahead on my next one and photograph the process instead of just the outcome. The one thing I don't like about this build is I should have made larger bolsters, especially the front bolster. The look is unbalanced. What I was thinking at the time was to maximize the Ram horn, make that a big part of the knife. But the result is an overall imbalanced look, I think. Oh well, live and learn, right?
Thanks, and comments welcome. This is only my second post here.
The titanium liners seemed pretty thick to me, so I decided to try making integral bolsters. Basically, I milled out the area between the bolsters in which to inset the Ram's Horn handle material. This was my first attempt to mill titanium, and it was not as bad as I had expected. I've got the littlemachineshop version of the Sieg X2 mill, and it handled it just fine.
For the blade, I did a high hollow grind, finishing the point with a very short clip. Thumb stud is one from knifekits.com, concentric circles. I tried to carry that theme to the pivot head, and used a lathe to cut concentric circles in that as well.
The Ram's horn turned out nice, I think. I bought a rack on e-bay for practically nothing. The stuff is fairly easy, though smelly, to process. Just cut in usable sizes, boil it for 15 minutes or so (the smelly part, I did it outside), then press in a vise between two boards to flat. It tends to curl if you don't use it right away, but can be re-flattened with another boil.
The other different thing I did was make a thong hole out of titanium tube. I used the flaring tool from USAKnifemaker to flare the ends and set it in the tong holes. It is in there good and tight. Since the pics were taken I've added a braided leather lanyard, with a little silver dohickey bead.
I also used the Tung Carb Carbidizer from USAKnifemaker to put a layer of tungsten on the surfaces of the liner lock and blade. That tool is really worth it when it saves a blade after you've taken just a hair too much off a lock or blade, or to really fine-tune a button lock. Seems you can put a couple thou down with that no sweat.
The other thing that is different is that I jeweled the inside of the handles and then anodized the titanium with a rainbow effect. You can't really see it in these photos, so I'll take some more, but when you look inside the knife there is a colorful surprise.
So that's it, not much in the way of a tutorial, I'll try to think ahead on my next one and photograph the process instead of just the outcome. The one thing I don't like about this build is I should have made larger bolsters, especially the front bolster. The look is unbalanced. What I was thinking at the time was to maximize the Ram horn, make that a big part of the knife. But the result is an overall imbalanced look, I think. Oh well, live and learn, right?
Thanks, and comments welcome. This is only my second post here.