Micro Sloyd Knife Handle

Blade blank hand-forged and heat-treated by Nic Westermann, then shaped and honed by Dave the Bodger. I just made the handle for it.

The handle is made from a wonderful stabilized blank of flamed maple with an ebony bolster. Whilst waiting for the blank to arrive in the post, I experimented with various water-based dyes on another piece of flamed maple to see what I liked. I tried blue, turquoise, teal, various greens and reds and even tried my hand at a kind of sunburst effect. I did loads of experiments, mixing dyes and overlaying dyes using different colours until I arrived at something I thought would work well.

When the actual blank came through my letterbox though, I knew instantly that it was too beautiful to put any dye on it. I just glued a lump of ebony on the end, drilled for the tang, then shaped it with a turning saw and worked the rough shape with a couple of rasps. Then I just sanded up through the grits from P80 to P7000. The finish is just one light coat of Antique Amber Peacock Oil and two light coats of Renaissance Wax. Just enough to pop the grain without losing any of the chatoyance. Of course you can't appreciate the chatoyance from photos, so here's a link to a video of the knife, although even this doesn't do it justice.

This 40mm knife is used for detail work, finishing cuts and tight concave turns. Nic forges these knife blanks from a round bearing steel bar and Dave shapes the blanks so they have a distal taper (thinner towards the point) with narrow symmetrical bevels. It arrives scary sharp and has a rounded and polished back to aid push cuts.

The handle was a lot of fun to make and a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The best bit though, is that I only used half of the stabilized flamed maple, so I get to do it again at some point down the line.

Thanks for looking!