New life for an old Tanto WIP

Eaglewood · Jan 8, 2012

Here is an old Tanto that I did many many years ago when I thought I knew what I was doing--I bought the blank and figured, this cant be that hard to do. I actually welded the guard on it with a stick welder LOL :what!: (which I have ground off since)
It had cocobolo handles that I brought back from Belize with me when I was on a missions trip there and I used a nut and bolt to hold it on!!! How embarrassing!!!! What a waste of some great material!!!!

So now since I have a great teacher (Thanks Randy!!) and know more what to do, I am going to use this for a project knife and see how I do.
I am going to probably try bolsters and some spacers along with nice handle material. We shall see!

This is kind of a WIP posting as well.

Always looking for comments and such.
Here we go---

Rich · Jan 9, 2012

I have been thinking of the same thing with a KABAR blade I got a long time ago she I also thought I knew what I was doing.

Eaglewood · Jan 15, 2012

New life for an old Tanto-- finished

Well, it ended up not being a WIP-- just a start and finish!!
I made a lot of mistakes on this one, figured out how to do some other things, learned a lot about the different materials and how they react with each other--(Brass gets HOT!!). At any rate, I cant say that Im unhappy with it, just knowing that I did it completely on my own and it came out this good was an achievement!!. There are a lot of things I dont like about it, but a lot I do. The bolster is Burl from Randy at HHH, the spacers are brass and dyed dinobone, and the handle is called Dragon Scale.

I am going to have Randy give me a complete critique when I visit him next (Be brutally honest but compassionate brother) and learn what to do and not to do next time.
By the way, this was done with a Harbor freight 1 x 30 sander also. I will be getting my new Grizzly 2 x 72 and 1 x 42 soon!!!.

SO here it is-- sorry about the pic quality-- only one cup of coffee this morning.

Let me have it all!!!