# Rehandle and restoration of an old Forgecraft



## stereo.pete

This one started off as a complete mess. Both handle slabs were loose on the handle, which allowed heavy corrosion on the tang, the tip was missing and heavy pitting all along the blade face. If that wasn't bad enough, she was incredibly thick behind the edge. 

I started off by attempting to flatten the tang on my 9" disc grinder and was able to fix most of the corrosion issues. Next up was thinning the bevels on my belt grinder and finally hand sanding. I'm awaiting some special tools to be delivered this week so I can begin working on the handle. Handle will be white spacers with natural micarta, which I think will be a classy look. 

One thing that is bothering me is that I drilled a 1/4" hole in the tang to make hand sanding easier and the drill literally went in like butter, very different than the annealed O1 I am used to working with. Any ideas? Do you think the heat treat is jacked on this knife or do they have soft tangs via differential heat treat?






Regards,

Pete


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## Von blewitt

Looking good Pete! I'm excited to see this progress.


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## chefcomesback

What kind of drill bits are you using Pete? Some of the full tang knives I have attempted to rehandle were not completely hardened along the handle part. Makers are maybe eyeballing the blade part heated up throughly rather than handle side 


Sent from my iPhone using Kitchen Knife Forum


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## stereo.pete

chefcomesback said:


> What kind of drill bits are you using Pete? Some of the full tang knives I have attempted to rehandle were not completely hardened along the handle part. Makers are maybe eyeballing the blade part heated up throughly rather than handle side
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Kitchen Knife Forum



I'm using a standard cobalt drill bit, I hope you're right about the lack of heat treatment on the handle. I guess I will find out when I finish it in terms of edge holding.


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## 29palms

They get quite hard near the choil. I'm going to build a wet abrasive saw for this very conversion process as it's too hard on expensive band saw blades.


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## Sabaki

stereo.pete said:


> I'm using a standard cobalt drill bit, I hope you're right about the lack of heat treatment on the handle. I guess I will find out when I finish it in terms of edge holding.



cobalt withstand high heat, warm the area with a acute gas burner to soften, drill fast and cool the drill after its done


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## weebus

stereo.pete said:


> One thing that is bothering me is that I drilled a 1/4" hole in the tang to make hand sanding easier and the drill literally went in like butter, very different than the annealed O1 I am used to working with. Any ideas? Do you think the heat treat is jacked on this knife or do they have soft tangs via differential heat treat?



Hey Pete,

I've drilled holes in a few Forgecraft tangs and found them to be quite soft towards the rear on a couple of them. So long as you were careful not to overheat it while grinding, I wouldn't sweat it. If you're unsure, it's not a bad idea to sharpen it up and give it a trial run before you spend time on the handle... just be sure to dull it and tape it up when you do put it on.

Mike


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## stereo.pete

Mike,

I was very careful while thinning the knife so I know it never reached a high enough temp to ruin the temper. Looks like the ends of the tangs might just be very soft.


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## Dave Martell

Many Japanese western tangs are like this, hard as hell up near the choil and soft as butter on the tail end.


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## weebus

stereo.pete said:


> I was very careful while thinning the knife so I know it never reached a high enough temp to ruin the temper. Looks like the ends of the tangs might just be very soft.



In that case, I wouldn't worry!

That's pretty much been my experience... never ran into any I had to torch to drill. Though, this has somewhat piqued my curiosity. I have a couple of old Forgecrafts sitting around awaiting re-handles... when I'm home I'm going to pop the handles off and take some hardness readings along the tangs.


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## stereo.pete

I finally had some time to work on my Forgecraft chef knife refurb project.

Here's the result finish of my first use of a scotch brite belt, I love it!




and here is the handle glued up and ready to cure for 24 hours


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## Dave Martell

Looking good Pete, I can't wait to see the whole thing finished up.


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## apicius9

Nice work. I am following closely, I also have one of those somewhere for the same kind of project  I like the Scotchbright belt idea. If you don't mind the question, do you think one of these small oscillating hand sander thingies would also work, at least for the coarser grits to get it started?

Stefan


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## stereo.pete

apicius9 said:


> Nice work. I am following closely, I also have one of those somewhere for the same kind of project  I like the Scotchbright belt idea. If you don't mind the question, do you think one of these small oscillating hand sander thingies would also work, at least for the coarser grits to get it started?
> 
> Stefan



I'm no expert, but I imagine it would work as long as you are careful not to overheat the blade and ruin the temper. Personally I would just use a good quality wet/dry sand paper and a flat piece of steel, micarta or even wood as a sanding stick to clean up the bevels. The added benefit of the sanding stick would be your ability to control the scratch pattern. I would imagine those oscillating sanders might cause some deep gauges in weird patterns that might be hell to remove. I assume you're talking about the steel, because when it comes to handles you are a true artist :biggrin:


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## stereo.pete

Well,

This is only the third handle I've ever made and it's not what I envisioned, but I can say that it feels 100x more comfortable in the hand and looks much better than where I started off at. I have about 10% more work left with this knife, which includes rounding the spine and choil and finally sharpening.


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## daveb

Looking sweet, Pete. Where is that "like" button???


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## stereo.pete

Thanks Dave, again I am humbled by the many fine blade smiths out there who can make a symmetrical handle by hand.


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## Bill13

Pete,

That looks really nice, the handle matches the blade nicely.

Nice looking shop by the way, well done.


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## Dave Martell

Pete that handle came out great. I agree with Bill that it matches the knife well. Keep it up!


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## 29palms

Looks great Pete how was the micarta to work with? I know the dust is awful, but did it take a toll on the tooling?


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## stereo.pete

No issues with the tooling that I can say. My Wife did complain that I smelled of formaldehyde when I came into the house due to the dust on my clothes. I wear a 3m dust mask with p100 filters, which are designed for such hazards, but the smell is there long after the fact.


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## 29palms

So in other words you smell like your avatar looks? JK :lol2:


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## stereo.pete

29palms said:


> So in other words you smell like your avatar looks? JK :lol2:



Well played lol!


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