Bowie Knife

A friend of mine, Thomas Lea author of Boise Style, had purchased some knife blades more than a decade ago. The plan was to make deer antler handles and have some display or costume pieces. He never got around to it, and recently asked me to put antler handles on a couple of blades. I hadn’t done any antler handles, and I learned something in the process. drilling antlers stinks. It smells like burning hair when its drilled. Nasty. The first one was a Bowie knife with a carbon steel blade made by Soligen. The handle was kind of long, and I worried about drilling it straight down the center. He already had the brass pommel and guard, so after drilling the hole it was pretty easy.

The nice thing about an antler handle compared to a wood or micarta one is that there is no shaping or finishing the handle. Its more a matter of picking the right section of antler.