2-21-04 This is the knife called The Bastard. The fourth set of bolsters went on and the mammoth ivory is amazing. Both this knife and the other called Number One went to Joe this morning for engraving. I think they will come out OK.

2-21-04 This is the last of the 4 knives in this project and by far the most ambitious. So far it is just a concept. The bolster is shaded and as you can see wraps around most of the handle. If you have a look at the tentative design below you can get an idea of what we are up against. In the handle, surrounded by the extended bolster will be a giraffe bone inset that will have a scrim picture. Our plan is to bring in a scrimshander that will go into cahoots with us. This is only a starting point and I expect it will probably be much different by the time we are done. I suppose I could have come up with an easier design, but where is the fun in that? This will be called a 3/4 Interframe handle.

2-23-04 We have a new collaborator! Ron Newton joins us to scrim the design above, or at least a variation of it. I’ll post some pictures of Ron’s scrim work a little bit later. Ron’s been doing scrim for 20 years now. Welcome Ron, we’re glad to have you.

3-2-04 We are basically a go on the above project. I have the blade ground and nearly polished up. Just an hour or of polishing and then figuring out to best drill it for the pins to hold the extended bolster. I’ll get some pictures up of that when I get that part going.

3-8-04 The large 416ss pieces have been surface ground to get them dead flat for a tight fit. To the left you can see where I have roughed in the outline on the knife handle for reference and to plan where I will place the pins.

Before I can begin to cut it out, I have to finished the front end of the bolsters. It is nearly impossible to get a good finish after they have been mounted to the knife.

3-8-04 The ‘hole’ for the giraffe bone has been rough cut out with the band saw. I left approximately an eight of an inch to remove. You can see that I changed the design on the front of the bolster slightly. I didn’t have a piece of 416ss large enough to do the original design.

3-13-04 To remove that last little bit of remaining material I used my milling machine and side cut with an end mill. This gets a bit dicey but it worked quite nicely. Normally, using an mill you have to clamp the material down tightly and use the X,Y or Z axis adjustment wheels. In this case, I locked all those down and move the stock into the end mill free hand. It required a tight grip as it wanted to go shooting across the room when ever it touched the mill.

3-13-04 Changing out the end mill to a Dremmel sanding drum was just the ticket. It smoothed out the cut out quite nicely. Note that both pieces were done at the same time while they were pinned together. This will keep the front and back of the knife interframe (the cut out part) identical.

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