That is very, very, very helpful.

Thank you, Steve and Dan for posting this.

Great Demo Steve!

Thanks, for posting!

Russell

Karl and Russell,

Glad to hear this tutorial helps out! If anyone has questions about making one of these handles, post them up here and I will reply.

Thanks for posting the tutorial Dan!!

Great tutorial Steve, and Dan, Thank you for posting them. I sure wish this had been around when I did my dagger. This will save people a lot of headaches.

Good stuff.

Brion

Thank You for posting this tutorial.

I have a Question.

How does the softness of the Gold wire effect the twisting?

I have only found 1/4 hard at this time.

Sincerely,

Dave

Hello David. Ideally you want dead soft wire as the twisting will work harden the wire somewhat. Riogrande Jewelry Supply has dead soft gold wire and silver. Not cheap though, they are good people to work with.

Brion

800-545-6566

Riogrande

Hi Brion,

Thank you for your reply and Rio's Phone number. The cost of the wire was a consideration but I really like the overall effect it gives on Ivory.

For a African Black wood fluted handle proto type I plan to make I will be using Silver wire.

Sincerely,

Dave

I have only used 24k gold wire for dagger handles. I always purchase dead soft wire. 24k gold will work harden some, but not as much as silver, or lower alloys of gold.

If you have problems with your wire being too hard; or are concerned that you might have trouble, there is no reason why you can't anneal it before use. The supplier should be able to supply annealing information for whatever wire you purchase.

It is likely that the wire will have some amount of fire scale on it after annealing. This can be removed with a pickling solution, or manually polished away. Pickling will often leave the surface of the wire with a clean, but flat, non-reflective surface. No shine. The wire can be brightened by pulling it through a rag charged with Flitz, or other fine abrasive compound. You'll probably then have to find a way to clean the polishing compound out of the wire turns.

Whatever you do to refinish the wire after annealing, will probably not reach down into the areas were the wire overwraps itself. So, you get sort of a two tone finish. This actually isn't such a bad thing. It creates some depth to the finish and appearance of the wire. I once built a knife with a stainless steel wire wrapped handle. The stainless wire work hardened a bunch when I twisted it. HAD to anneal it to work with it. I went ahead and wrapped the handle before cleaning up the wire. After the handle was assembled, I buffed the wire in place. Came out looking pretty cool.