Making a ballock dagger

[SirUlf]

Here's the first part of my current project which is to make my own dagger. Going to get a blade and bits for the sheath from Tod once I get the go-ahead from the lady of the house. Here's the handle so far. It's piece of yew, which I thought was rather fitting as I'm an archer. It's been hand carved so it's not perfect. I've also made it rather thick as opposed to the thinner handles more commonly seen. Not sure how accurate it is, but to me it feels a bit more "workmanlike" with a bigger handle and it's made to fit my hand. The groove at the bottom is partly as an homage to my first knife I ever got, and which I still have, and also because it's rather functional. Going to do the "ballocks" themselves next and carve up a bit from the narrow point so it won't have so much of an outward curve.

[SirUlf]

Right, well, no risk of getting lost among all the posts, but here's the finished handle. No blade yet, obviously. it turned out a bit shorter so I'm thinking of using it for an eating knife instead. What do people think; is it ok to have two ballock daggers, one small single edged and one large double? Or is it a ballock too far?



Here's another one I've started one, with a more conventional handle and a bit longer, so this would be double edged:

[chidokan]

how do you intend to 'drill' the hole for the blade? I was looking at the MR book which has a load of sample line drawings and the tangs seem flat/triangular...

[SirUlf]

The blades from Tod's Stuff have quite a long tang I've been informed, so it's just a matter of drilling a hole through and epoxying it in, cut the tang to length and gently "mushroom" it. Tod has instructions on his page.

[SirUlf]

Well, change of plans... Got a blade but it didn't go with the handle, so did an eating knife instead and a pricker to go with it. Hand-carved yew as the previous one. Going to make a scabbard for them, some sort of combo thing. I don't have a proper reference for the shape, but it's sort of based on proper ones. Figured as long as it looks the part.