Making slotted knife guards

[Aden Cassidy]

Made one and attached it.Made a quick, dirty knife to try it on. Took most of a day for a first try, wondering what sort of tools you can use and easily make to do the whole instead of cutting in from the side. Really like how much more solid it appears to be.

[Frosty]

I suppose I could just make something up, I DO like creative writing but I don't know if it's help you at all. Maybe a pic would help constrain my creative side?

Of course you could just slit and drift it. Take a look at the pics of Brian Brazeal's slitter available somewhere here on IFI, it's a marvelous hole in hot steel maker. Seriously it's a terrific tool and pretty easy to make unless you want to buy one from Brian of course.

AND remember, post PICS! We LOVE pics.

Frosty The Lucky.

[bigfootnampa]

Slit punch or drill and jewelers saw with files to do the fine fitting. You could also multi-drill and then file. Slit and drift would also work and be more efficient for production work, usually not the easiest way for one off designs.

[Rich Hale]

i do them three ways: The first way I learned when I really begin making nicer knives was to drill little holes, one sixteenth inch, fairly close together and then enlarge them a couple of times,,some of the holes woiuld join up, and i could take needle files and connect them all to make a rouigh sided slot. Then flat files would smooth things oiut and I coiudl ltest fit to the blade and slowly get a really nice fit. Am improvement to this method was repacing the hand drill with a drill press. lNext I got a jig...Made of D2 steel with a carefully fitted hole lin it and four bolts to clamp it in place on the guard material. It was left las quenched hard and files woul skate and not change irs deminsions. I could drilol thoiught the slot and remove as much material as I could like above. Then fil through the jig. It woiuld be really close when I removed the jig and I couild hand fit guard to blade.
The method I use now is to mill the guards to really tight tolerances.Then hand fit as with the other nethods.
Times. I think I can fit a guard with first method in about 20 minutes, Fifteen or so with the jig, and maybe ten or less with mill.
For the upcoming knife chat I will slit and drift a guard. And pics and text will be posted.