Knifemaking Tuesdays Week 59 - Handles Media

This week we worked on our new titanium Norseman handles. Since doing the last batch of knives, I've made quite a few subtle but effective changes to the design and to the way they are machined. For the first few batches of knives I was getting all the handles waterjet cut, which is a common and very good way to turn a huge sheet of metal into usable parts. But now that I have the Mitee Bite VacMagic vacuum table I am able to suck down a whole sheet and machine 9 pairs of handles and a bunch of clips in one go. But that's for next week. This week I'm going through my old inventory of waterjet handles and making them with the new design, so I made a quickie fixture to do one pair at a time.

There are a ton of machining operations on the backside of my handles, more than most other knifemakers I'm sure. Very complicated and time consuming but I'm really happy with how they're turning out. One of the big tricky things is threadmilling the handles and clips, it's like tapping, but better because you can tap right to the bottom of a blind hole. And since my handles are so relatively thin, and I don't want the holes to go through, this is the way that made sense.

Enjoy the video, lots more to come over the next few weeks while we're finishing up this batch of knives!