Knife build #21

I ordered this Hock carving knife blade from Hock Tools. It is model CKB125, a one and one quarter inch carving knife blade made from high carbon steel and hardend to Rc62. This carving knife will be used in my shop. It will have handle scales from a piece of padauk. For the most part, all of the steps in this process are identical to the knife build #5, a carving knife. Details of that #5 build are shown in greater detail here. Info about knife blades is available at Hock site
The handle will be relatively thin and long, this is a standard carving knife blade. The top edge of the blade will be coplanar with the edge of the handle. Here the area to remove is drawn out...the blank is held in a pattern maker's vise.
The " deep rebate was created with a markout line knifed in...the bulk of waste was pulled with a hand router...and the touch up with paring chisels.
The blanks are ready for the holes...
I drilled one 5/32 hole using the blade tang hole as a guide...then stuck a pin in that hole to make sure the second hole was properly located.
The knife was then epoxied and clamped overnight...blank is now ready for shaping...
Pins and surfaces were ground down on the belt sander with 80x paper. Then final edges to be worked were marked out to be cut at the scroll saw.
Then back to the belt sander for surface grinds...
...the spine of the blade is exposed to be coplanar on the top edge of the handle.
Final shaping of the front of the handle...at the blade...was done with Auriou rifflers.
After the desired shape was acheived, further removal of wood was done with the Rotex 90 sander...the grits were progressed from 40x-80x-120x-220x-320x-400x.
The handle is now quite smooth...on to wet sanding.
The finishing cycle consisted of multiple coats of Waterlox© wiping varnish. Each coat was saturated and then dried using wet/dry sandpaper.
One saturation and rub-in was done at each grit from 400x-600x-800x-1000x, The finish was extremely smooth.
Finished knife.