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My Hudson Bay trade knife

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Sidmand:
Thanks all!  I am considering putting a false edge on the tip to make it a little less forward heavy, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea yet.  Maybe I will just use it for a while and then adjust accordingly after I get a feel for it.  I wanted it to at least look historically accurate and the originals didn't have a false edge that I could tell.  I tried to use walnut for the handle scales, but I screwed it up twice and ran out of walnut.  I found a local specialty lumber store that sold that Katalox and it looked nice, so I bought a 10 dollar board of it.  I briefly wondered if I could make a bow out of it, but I don't think it is flexible enough.  I know it is crazy hard though, harder than Ipe!

Those bolts were a giant pain - I started out just trying to use 1/4-20 brass bolts and hex nuts, but the nuts were to thin and the thread to coarse so when I went to grind it flat it ate through the nut and it popped off the screw shaft.  My Dad worked in the mines and give me a big piece of "brass" that they used as shims for continuous miners.  I say "brass" cause I figured out pretty quick it was an alloy with some kind of ferrous metal in it - brass isn't supposed to be magnetic or that dadgum hard!  But, the sheet was 7/8 inch thick, so I cut squares out of it and then tapped the squares with a 1/4 X 28 die, then rounded them off to 1/2 inch diameter on the grinder and with a file.  took a bit and there was some cursing and rework, but it came out looking pretty cool to me.

I was surprised at the shine I could get on 5160, I didn't expect it to shine up that well at all. 

BlackHillsScout:
Real nice! I really like the Hudson Bay knife

Mountain Man1:
That is a gorgeous blade! The handle looks a bit small for me, but I've got pretty big mitts. How does it feel in the hand?

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