KNIFE KITS:

Helle Knife Kits Available:

• Utvaer
• Filleting Knife

 

Wood scales: The wood blocks (or scales) are fabricated in a number of different ways, to match the clients preference for installation AND the knife in question. Knife blanks typically come either as a “full tang”, “half tang”, OR a “stick tang”. The tang is the part of the metal knife that is hidden in the wood handle. Where the outer wood scales are two pieces, they have been bundled as book-matched pairs.

 

Stick Tang: This implies basically a doweled metal end, similar to the end on your file, that gets epoxied into a hole in the end of a wood block. So the wood is normally about 1″ thick, 1.25-1.5″ wide and 5-6″ long. Traditionally metal workers have heated the end of the tang, forced the hot end down into a wooden block and burned an appropriate hole.  This risk is two fold: 1. that you will affect the temper of the blade, and 2. that the hole will not be large enough to accommodate both the blade and the epoxy and when assembled snap apart the block. If you watch “Forged In Fire” you will have noticed this numerous times. For this reason, Lacasse has calibrated this pieces of exotic wood to match the thickness of the tang, to allow for a more “sandwiched” laminating technique to create the handle. Come ask for a demonstration.

 

Full Tang:  In this case, the metal handle extension of the blade is full size and when the blade is complete, the metal profile of the handle shows on all sides. Assembly simply implies added a piece of wood to each side of the tang, and shaping it to come flush.

 

Half Tang: There is one mutant.. where the full tang has been shaved down on the bottom edge, to create a “half tang”. The suggestion was that if you are using this in the bush in the cold seasons, this design would allow you to insert wood into your lamination at the bottom edge, to prevent metal contact with the palm of your hand… theory suggests this will prevent frost burn!! For this reason, Lacasse also carries special kits for these knives that has thin exotic wood inserts to match the math of the “Half Tang”, building the handle from basically two halves plus one small insert equal to the thickness of the tang … for the bottom edge.

 

ORDERING ONLINE KITS: coming soon, … but we do have them ready to go at the shop