This blade and pair of scales arrived for a 'simple' handle. The blade is an AE damascus blade and the scales are carbon fibre. The carbon fibre is textured on the flats so all that was wanted was the outside surface to be gently rounded over.
Simples, or so I thought!
So when I checked the blade out, I discovered it had a slight curve to the left. A barely perceptible curve but enough to mean that the scales wouldn't sit flat.
There are a number of ways I could rectify this problem:
- Soften the blade in a forge, straighten and re-heat treat ~ I didn't want to do this as I don't know the steels used so wasn't comfortable that I would get the heat treat correct.
- Grind the tang to a taper ~ not suitable for the owner as they wanted the look to be very much like a Spyderco folding knife with the scales parallel
- Grind the entire knife thinner ~ it would have been a lot of work to do and would have needed the bevels regrinding as well
- Temper the blade in the oven while clamped flat ~ this was what I tried, a number of times. I clamped it flat first, which took a little bit of the curve out. I then did it again while shimmed up to over bend it but to no success.
I ground the tang away to a stick tang and then got some Orange G10 and made a frame tang.
I then treated it as if it was a full tang knife again and this is how it turned out....
