I did a tutorial on this once, it all went away when photo bucket started charging. Essentially abalone is a large thin dome shaped shell. In order to form a hidden tang handle I laminated the nested shells together in seven layers of shell. I then formed a box with four sides by mitering the laminated shell sections. There's 28 pieces of shell in that handle. So, if viewed from the end, the handle section would look like a rectangle shaped picture frame with the tang hole running through the center from end to end. Then the handle is formed from that.