Case Bowie Rehab

[Steve Warden]

Bob, Dale - thanks for the education.

[doglegg]

Very, very sweet Dale!!!

[Reverand]

That really is beautiful, Dale. It is good to know that your patience paid off, when you waited so long for a piece if antler that was "just right". Because it certainly is!

[orvet]

I knew I had a few before picture somewhere of this case Bowie. They're not great but the give you an idea of the, shaped the knife was in. I peeled all the electricians tape off of the handle before I took any pictures. The whole pile side of the handle was really badly messed up and, a piece missing and someone had tried to glue it together.
The views I did find are not encouraging but do not look too bad. The top of the handle was broken off right along the tang as you can see in the picture.

I have a fair amount of deer & elk stag and before making knives with hidden tangs. The problem is generally finding the exact right piece of stag to go with the knife you restoring. I have about four or five elk antler beams in my shop to choose from and just could not make up my mind which piece of mail that would make the best handle. When I finally decided, I cut the handle it out of an elk beam, drilled out the center of the beam and drilled the three pin holes in place. When I assembled it I used 5 minute epoxy and three brass pins. As you can see from the pictures the brass pins they are peened and the stag is glued inside, so it has both glue and mechanical fixtures holding the handle on. That one won't be an easy one to get a part if someone ever decides to redo it again.

I was not sure that the piece of stag was the right one for the handle, but the more I worked with it the better it got.
For me stag is kind of a lesson in patience, at first it may not look-alike you wanted to but if you work with it long enough it generally looks better than you thought possible.

Thanks for looking,
Dale

[Meridian_Mike]

Once again Dale...You did a great job and created a thing of beauty!
Tape and glue.... YUCK!! what a mess!!