Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
These skinning knives were made for my brothers and another friend of ours. I made my brothers a leopardwood and zebrawood handle on their knives to match a pair of fillet knives I made for them a few years back. One of our friends was the recipient of the 2nd leopardwood knife, I used it again because I love how it looks on a knife.The knife blanks are from Camillus and I got them at my local Woodcraft. This was the first time I've used knives from this brand and I think I will definitely use them again in the future. We had the good fortune to break in the zebrawood skinner last weekend and it worked very well.Each pair of scales were grain matched (how did I forget that photo?) so the knife blank looks like it cut through them. Each scale is held on the blank by Gorilla Glue epoxy and pins, I used one mosaic pin in each handle as an accent. I do most of the initial handle shaping with a reciprocating drum sander and then finish by hand going up to 400 grit. The zebrawood shapes super easily and the leopardwood takes a little work. All of them got a coat of tung oil and then 6 or 7 coats of Tru Oil over that to harden them up. Tru Oil is a gun stock finish and I've found it works great on knife handles and won't wear off that easily.Thanks very much for taking a look at them.