Need To Rivet Handles. No Clue On Hand Riveting.

Countersinking in a washer and peening a pin to lock it in place works well and is very strong, but looks crude. If you are looking for a rustic look or totally prizing durability over looks go for it. There are various specialized bolts that work well too...Loveless style bolts are a personal favorite for hard duty. The only real fun with rivits to me is working with epoxy and rivits...it's messy and the epoxy acts like a thick oil and lets the wood slip. Make sure everything is drilled correctly and dry fit first. Be prepared for epoxy everywhere. Painters tape is your friend. Oversize and sanded to finish dimensions is necessary for finer work. A proper belt grinder is great for this but files, sandpaper, and patience can work wonders.

There are lots of web pages for knifemaking that will walk you through installing slab handles.

I use lots of West brand epoxy. Great stuff. Any hardwood is fine, mostly I choose high grades for my knives but for utility use my choice is mesquite simply because I have truckloads of it. Old sledgehammer handles, nice chunks of hardwood firewood, a limb from your favorite tree, whatever works...just make sure it is dry before installation because it will shrink as it dries.

Thanks a ton for the info CDH ! we are going w/ the loveless brands. We never even knew they existed. Very cool. This project as been such a significant stepping stone and "OJT" project for the two of us. It is a Dad/Son project that's kept us doing more and more together. We've done the following in about 10Mos. As a pair of newbs - We're getting along well and welcome any input and suggestions you may have too. We're all over Youtube and Sites for knife makers. We love the forged in fire series on H. Learning from everywhere these days.

Upgraded a 30Taper Mill to CNC Centroid ourselves.
Learned to Mill via some trial and error w/ our Draftsight & DolphinCam setups.
Heat treating... We rebuilt a thermolyne that's not in the cards long term. Instead went with an Evenheat since they are 1.5hrs away from me. Spent time learning how to normalize, anneal, mill, harden, and then temper the 1045 we are playing with. We will move into some different steels in time. For now, this is our speed and budget.
Grinding- Wheel grinding, slack grinding, platen grinding, All on the new AMK-77 that makes more happen faster.
sharpening. The Axe below needed a custom jig and we can sharpen the entire surface evenly and shave paper. Seems that making jigs and tools is something we will do often as machinists?? To sharpen; We use a Tormek slow wet system. Nice to own as we have such sharp tools now.
Wood Lathe = a ton of fun. Spinning up chips and making things left and right. Handles are really smooth but we keep spinning wood to play

So now were into the mounting and final finishing of this thing. The kid wants the wood to look like a clear glass coating? Polished and hard. Not sure if that is a Urethane or Acrylic product? Any clues welcome. It's a hickory handle.

Thanks everyone here for the months and months of fun and help.

Urethane works, but if you're up for another challenge try a superglue finish. More Google time...LOL

Addicting, isn't it!

Nice looking axe!

I have put glass-like finishes on gun stocks and knife handles with acrylic lacquer. It involved many coats of spray finish with a day or so between coats followed by sanding with SiC wet or dry paper and a final hand rubbing with polishing compound. The longer you leave the coat to dry between spraying, the more completely the pores in the wood would be filled. My late Dad was a carpenter and he paid me the back-handed compliment of asking me where I got the plastic stock for my .22. Once the lacquer had a chance to cure properly, it was quite hard. Curing can be accelerated by placing in a low temperature oven (think box with light bulb).

Bob

Hi everyone, My Son and I are finally done with his 1st Axe project. It came out really nice. Included in the post are a few pics of the unit with the handle on. We ended up turning our own Hickory handle from some dried limb wood on my lot. To attach the handles, we used 3 SS hex screws on each side into a nut extender (?) cut in half. The blade is 1045 steel that we used a CNC plasma table to cut out. We setup and used a CNC Mill to make the even edges all the way around. The sharpening needed it's own custom jig and it is razorblade sharp! The unit was all fully heat treated w/ a quench and then a temper.

This was a really fun project for us. Learned so much. Thanks again everyone for sharing and all the help along the way.

Jeff and Mitch.

Very nice job . When we try new things we expand our range of knowledge and capabilities . Keep it up life's to short to not do the things you want . Times together are times well done and remembered.