Ebony marking knife

Ebony marking knife!

Marking knives are used to mark wood supposedly more accurately than a pencil. I’m not about to begin that debate, and currently my accuracy skills are not limited to my marking methods.

I want to put handles on some knife blanks I have and are afraid I’ll screw it up. So I am doing this project to allow myself to screw up and if it come out great that’s awesome, if it doesn’t, I learned a lot and will chuck it in the stream and try again.

I purchased the knife blank and some ebony scales. I really only need one of them because the knife is so thin. I marked out about the profile of the knife on the scales and between my jigsaw and my cheap Japanese sword saw thing I got them cut out.

When they say ebony is a hardwood, they ain’t kidding.

I need them together for the initial shaping, so i put two dots of superglue and glued them together. Once i have the rough shape I’ll break them apart. I hope. I’ll edit this with more as I work on this project.

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Just a thought. You mentioned superglue dots. A luthier trick is to put painter’s tape on two pieces of wood and place a couple of dots of CA medium viscosity on them. Press together and let harden. Then when you need to separate them, a twisting motion will dislodge the tape.

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Well til!

I did start hacking away with a chisel. And they stay together quite well. I guess I’ll cross the ‘separate them’ bridge when I get there…

I use a enough Superglue, to buy it by the pint, in woodturning. It will not stand heat and/or lateral forces. Depending on how I choose to mount a work piece on the lathe, I have to remember to use the gouge so it doesn’t put a lateral force on the joint. Put some heat on it before you apply force. I use a heat gun ./ hair dryer on it. It does not take much heat. Wood should stand it. Yes, Ebony is hard. Next time try wood glue (Tightbond) with a paper joint. Part of a Brown Paper Shopping bag. Apply glue to both pieces of wood, place the paper between them. Clamp well. Turners do many split turnings that way. Think about the Federal Style Furniture of the early 1800’s with the front edges covered with 1/2 of a column.

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A lot of Youtubers seem to put blue tape on the wood and then superglue the tape… but I am not an expert… just a viewer.

In trying out my new rasp they did come apart so twice small spots of HFca glue is probably what I’ll keep doing…

I know a few guys that do that for straight razor scales also

Grandkids quit arguing long enough for me to work on this a little.

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Had the day off, and since the cabbing machine is going to be sandblasted, I finished this project

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Looks great

Banana for scale… CLASSIC!

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That came out great. I can’t imagine even that small chunk was cheap. I’ve heard ebony goes for like 100-200 per board foot