Thread: Knifemaking photo-essay (8) Shaping the guard

The previous post in this series was: https://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co....handle-105310/

Shaping the guard.

1) I attach an angled work rest to the flat platen linisher, and then angle the guard.

2) Front view of the angled guard.

3) Rounding off the bottom-front of the guard with a 180 grit belt.

4) The pink arrow indicates where the guard was rounded.

1) Sanding the spine with a 180 grit belt.

2) I sand the butt curve on the unsupported (slack) belt as indicated by the pink arrow.

3) 180 grit sanding of the sides.

4) 180 grit sanding of the finger grooves.

1) Sanding the bevels close to their final dimensions using a 180 grit belt.

2) I round off the handle and guard edges with a router using a small-radius TCT bit. Note the vacuum cleaner tube angling down from top left. I wear both safety glasses and a safety visor when I do this job. I slowly advance the workpiece into the tool, maintaining firm control, and I make sure to keep my fingers well away from the router bit.

3) Blending the guard flat/angle intersection with a fine file. I complete this job using abrasive cloth.

4) Rounding over the guard’s bottom corners.

Man you have some neat tools to use.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

Man you have some neat tools to use.

And more importantly the skills and experience to use them

Sheet, I would be really gunshy about that router bit - even blunt the thing you're making is sharp enough to penetrate if it gets flicked. Context, I was edging a piece of timber with a hand held router similar sort of job and had a grab from it I think due to a bit of crutch in the timber. It was enough to grab, rip the timber out from under the clamp setup, break the end off the router bit and send it which was helpfully stopped by the piece of shaped gib board that was leaning against the wall ready to patch a section that needed some wiring sorted (rats... Luckily it was the back of the board so just got patched with the hole repairs).

I'm really sketchy about hand held anything after that, as the tool was designed to be hand held but when it went there was no chance of hanging on it and the thing that saved me was the cutter section going out the side not towards me.

Nice bit of work otherwise though, feeling like a project coming on haha.