Knifemaking photo-essay (4) Soldering the guard

The previous post in this series was: https://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co....-guard-105071/

Soldering on the guard.

Once I’ve prepared the brass guard, I wash the knife blank in hot soapy water (dishwash detergent), rinse it with hot water, and dry it with a towel. I then wipe the surfaces to be soldered with a meths-soaked tissue, and allow the blank to dry.

1) How NOT to set up the soldering job. I use this tool when I solder the guards onto inletted half-tang knife blanks. The stainless screw, indicated by the pink arrow, locks the tool onto the tang. The screw below it presses the guard against the face of the recess in the blank. However, this tool doesn’t positively locate the bottom of the guard slot against the bottom of the recess in the blank. The result can be an unsightly steel-solder-brass junction or, at worst, there can be a void between the steel and the brass.

2) How I set up the soldering job with a custom-ground clamp. The pointed end on the right contacts the steel spine, and the blunt end on the left pushes the bottom of the guard slot up against the bottom of the recess in the steel. Once clamped, check up against the light to ensure the front face of the guard is contacting the front of the recess in the steel.

3) The custom clamp is fixed to a flat surface, and the guard is ready to be soldered.

4) I flux the joint thoroughly with zinc chloride flux, then solder it using lead-free solder. Make sure solder is applied all around the joint. I also check underneath to ascertain that solder is oozing out and that the joint has been completely penetrated.

Once the soldered joint is cool enough to touch, I plunge the assembly, clamp and all, into a bucket of water. Then, to remove any remaining (extremely corrosive) zinc chloride, I wash the blank thoroughly with hot soapy water, rinse it with hot water, and dry it with a towel.

5) and 6) Two front views of the soldered joint.

7) Solder has oozed out the back of the joint.

1) Safety first! I cover the point and most of the blade with this leather sheath. Then I sand away excess solder using abrasive cloth, usually starting with 150 grit and working down to 320 grit. This job was quite “clean”, so I was able to immediately use 320 grit. BTW, I generally use turps as a cutting fluid with both abrasive cloth and wet-and-dry sandpaper.

2) The cleaned up front of the guard.

3) Cleaning up the blade flats with 320 grit abrasive cloth. Don’t forget to clean up the small underside flat that’s between the guard and the edge (pink arrow).

4) Chiselling away excess solder on the guard’s rear face. I don’t do any extra work to clean up this face, as I’ll be cutting an internal angle into it.

1) Sanding the protruding top of the guard so it’s level with the spine.

Metal dust is generated during this step. I have to emphasize that, to avoid any possibility of lead poisoning, the solder I used was LEAD-FREE.

2) Cutting off excess brass.

3) Forming the finger groove in the guard using the small-diameter linisher.

4) The blank with soldered guard.

Fantastic photo essay mate :thumbsup: Thanks for putting this up!