The plastic scales were put on over the black forge scale and I think they are molded onto the tang. This hard black stuff actually smelled kind of like a BBQ when I ground it off - made me feel hungry.
Each knife scale had to be fitted for the exact side it was cut for as there were slight variations in the length; pitch of the forged in bolster to the scale and a bit of rounding at the bottom of the pitch from the bolster to the tang. It took a week of work from start to finish for these six knives.
They were a real challenge for the hand cutting and fitting of the tiger eye as I do it all with eye/hand coordination on a grinding wheel turning at 1750 RPM in a water spray...
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