Frame Handled Knives

I’m currently working on a new dagger project, as I had very good results with the last one. For this one I really wanted to use some ironwood scales, but I only have some thick enough for full tang (where the wood sandwiches the tang rather than the tang is inserted into it, which would be a stick tang). So for this project I’m trying for the first time a frame handled construction.

A frame handle construction is where you have a blade with a stick tang. Around this stick tang is assembled a metal case, in my case, copper, essentially transforming it into a full tang. On top and bottom of this, the tang is sandwiched with wood. This way you have the appearance of a full tang, yet before assembling the blade you can slide on a crossguard, which you cannot do with a normal full tang knife (due to the pommel normally being wider in diameter than the shoulder for the guard).

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