Thread: my first set of handmade wood scales.

I'm working on cleaning up an old Wade & Butcher but the original horn is beyond salvage. I thought about makeing new horn or antler scales but decided wood will be easier for my first time.

I picked up a block of purple heart, Ebony, and lignum vitae. My first set is out of the purple heart since its cheaper and easier to get my hands on. Obviously the blade still needs a lot of work, and I need to make a wedge, but here they are all done and polished. I used a little trick where I heat the purple heart up to hardening temperature to bring out a really deep dark purple. Polished with beeswax

Wow the purple really pops!

Nice Job!
Mike

Purpleheart is definitely neat that way. How did you heat it? heat gun? oven?

toaster oven , I noticed it got really dark when the saw heated it up so I thought it might work, I was pleasantly surprised when it did. going to order some washers and pin rod tomorrow as well as some stones. I finally got the blade surface as good as its going to get and honed the edge back straight with 800 and 1000. took about 100passes to get a little chip out and take out the slight negative curve in the edge. also restored the henckels I have with some light polishing work. Can't wait to shave with both of these once sharp.

Thanks for the heating tip! I may have to head over to Lee Valley for some wood shopping tomorrow.

That purple heart looks good that way. Another thank you for the tip on heating it.

Bob

Those scales look fantastic!! You really did a superior job!