Yes I am making yet another post about the dagger. Deal with it.
Anyway I meant to do this a few days ago but I've been working on something that KS wouldn't let me talk about, so here I am.
Basically I started with an AUS-8 steel dagger blade and tang with a rating of about 58-59 on the Rockwell hardness scale. I also had 2 G-10 washers (basically stupid strong plastic), a nickel guard, a nickel pommel, and obviously a bunch of pieces of relatively thick leather.
First, I slid the guard down the tang to the base of the blade, then used Gorilla glue to cement it in place. Then I did the same thing with one of the G-10 washers. After that, I put a bunch of leather washers with holes in the center on the tang (without gluing). Once I had as many as possible, I put the other G-10 washer onto the tang and glued the pommel to it. I was fortunate enough to have a screw-base tang so I was able to screw the pommel directly onto the tang. At this point the handle was incredibly ugly, but not as ugly as it was about to get. I clamped it down onto a vice, took a wood rasp, and began filing.
You can see the shape it's taking in the above photo (as well as dried glue just above the guard).
Note the size of the washers. This was after about 5 hours. And I can assure you that filing G-10 is not only harmful to your lungs/eyes but it insanely difficult.
The shape had begun to form in my next post, though:
The above pictures were taken at 11 or 12 hours into the handle. You can see the upper part of the handle closer to the guard is wider than that by the pommel.
After the second post, I did a lot of work without sharing it. Essentially I kept at the rasp until the entire handle was the same width, then I angled the corners to round them. After the whole thing was rounded, I used a file to smooth it out, round the G-10 washers, even everything out, and round the handle even better. I made it a full circle down by the pommel and it gradually became flatter up at the guard.
After the shaping was done, I used rough (60 grit) sandpaper to detail it, then I increased to 120 grit, then to 220 and up to over 300 grit. I needed about 800 to really polish the metal but that's the best I could do.
When the sanding was finished, I took beeswax and a hair-blow drier and meticulously rubbed and melted the wax into the handle. Leather absorbs a LOT of wax, so it took forever before it finally stopped. I used half my block of wax on it. After the wax, I took a spare leather piece and burnished the entire handle and then gave it another coat of room-temperature wax (then rubbed that it as well).
The result? This.
Next came the sheath. I used three separate pieces of leather that were all pretty thick. I also used 9 screw-back rivets and a button stud (plus more Gorilla glue).
I stained them as you can see with Pro Dye.
Kinda difficult to achieve that nice hombre but hey: this is my trade so I got it. After the stain was dry I used a little glue on the three pieces and then I used stamp leather hole punches like the ones below to pound in the holes for the rivets along the sides and in the belt strap. The leather was very thick, so it was extremely difficult. But I still got it.
After that I used more beeswax over the entire sheath. Front, back, loop, sides, all of it. Melt, rub. Melt, rub. The sides obviously absorbed a ton of wax again but I waxed and burnished multiple times to seal them in real nice.
The last step was to install the rivets. And I did just that.
Here's the back of the sheath:
What it looks like when I wear it on my right (apparently skinny) hip:
And there you have it folks. Dagger and sheath. 30 hours of work, many sore fingers, a lot of blood and sweat, at least one scar, a couple places grated bloody and raw by the rasp, a sliced-wide-open palm, more beeswax than I would've liked, leather, rivets, steel, and washers. I'm honestly very satisfied with this, especially the color and shene of the sheath (The shene was unintentional but happened from the wax. It's not shiny per se but does have just a little shene to it). Thoughts, mates? Open yet again to questions--any questions at all.
I see that this is the longest post I have ever made. Well, good news is that y'all won't ever have to see anything else about my dagger now. I've got it all out; a bunch of photos, like 5 posts about this, so I'm done and I can leave y'all alone about it.
Also thank you to all who offered me kind words and encouragement: EloquentRacer92, nobodyimportant, sanrio fanatic, Minecraftnerd, doggowaggo, EmoDinosaur72, pumpkin, and Nordic_Genealogist. Thanks again mates.
