In this part of the tutorial we make the first guard piece. This is the larger guard.

Part 1 of this tutorial is here

Next we are going to be making the steel guard. We do not make the smaller steel sub guard yet. You can use the same steel that you used for the blade. I opted to make these parts a little bit thicker, going with the same steel except 3/16 of an inch thick rather than 1/8 like the blade.
(O1 Tool Steel Sheet, Precision Ground, Annealed, 3/16" Thickness, 2 1/2" Width, 36" Length )

This is the piece that we make.

Cover your piece of steel with masking tape and use the template to transfer the pattern to the steel. It looks like this. Now the big challenge here is cutting out that blacked out slot. that is what the knife will slip through.

We can work out that slot this way. First use a center punch to put a series of divets down the center of that slot.

The reason why we center punch divets is so we know exactly where to drill holes and the drill won't drift. We don't have much room for error with this part of the process.

Here it is. The holes are drilled out. They should be 1/8 holes or smaller. Because that is the width of the blade.

Note something here. Keep the whole piece of steel intact for as long as you can. Don't cut the guard out of it yet. It is easier to clamp and easier to work with as a large piece.

Now I use a small metal saw to drag out those holes. Do as much cutting here as you can with a saw. This saves filing work.

Then I used some small files to finish it off - getting it to its final slot shape.

Once that is all done we can cut it off the piece of steel.

And there it is.

Slide it on the knife. It looks great.

One Note: As you are filing out the slot you should always be checking to see if it slides onto the knife. You want a nice comfortable fit with no sloppiness.

Let's continue with the tutorial and make the first wooden handle pieces

The Atlas Knife Forge - This is a wonderful little gas forge for knife making. I also have pics of one sent in by a web visitor right here: The Atlas Mini Forge. Thinking about knife making and looking for a forge to do the job? This is it!

Make Sting from the Hobbit - Fun tutorial and I show you step-by-step how to make this famous sword from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

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