# Making a Wa Handle with Hand Tools... continued



## tostadas (Mar 1, 2022)

This is my second attempt at a wa handle, this time trying to stick to a more traditional octo design. Similar to my previous handle, this one was also just using primarily hand tools (saw, drill, sandpaper on an atoma block, and various hand files).

I decided to go with a cheap piece of maple I got and african blackwood.






And the knife for this one is a fun little 170mm Kyohei Shindo.





Holes drilled and dowel sized for the tang.





Glued up and sanded the edges to be roughly square. Then measured off on both ends for sizing. The lines drawn on the sides of the block were my guides for sanding.





Cut/sanded it down to size and also shaped the facets. Tapered 19x23 to 21x26, 120mm. I dislike really small handles, so I made sure this one had enough thickness to fit my hand comfortably. And I simply adjusted the length to maintain the balance of the knife.





After fine sanding, rounding all the sharp edges, and with a few layers of hardwax oil, now the detail in the wood really pops.









I also did all my fit and finish improvements on the blade itself. Rounded and smoothed spine, choil, and reshaped the pointy heel. Then removed the sandblast finish and vertical grind marks, polished the core and applied a smooth kasumi finish. Balance is right in front of the choil








Choil shot for good measure.


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## Carl Kotte (Mar 1, 2022)

Awesome!


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## birdsfan (Mar 1, 2022)

Really nice work! All the more impressive that it was done with hand tools!


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## ch_br (Apr 9, 2022)

great work all around!


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## JoBone (Apr 9, 2022)

Looks great! How much time did you put into it ?


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## Bensbites (Apr 9, 2022)

Nice job


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## tostadas (Apr 9, 2022)

JoBone said:


> Looks great! How much time did you put into it ?


I think around 10hrs give or take. It was done maybe 30mins to an hour at a time, whenever I had a bit of free time to spare. Getting it to size with sandpaper took a long time. Second biggest chunk of time was finishing it. Since so much of my time was already going into it, why not go all out and make sure it's perfect to the best of my ability.


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## nexus1935 (Apr 9, 2022)

Looks awesome! Especially given the hand tools


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