Well, with only a few knives under my belt, I don't really feel qualified to answer. With that being said, I will tell you what I did. After drilling my holes in the stag, I took a tapered reamer and just enlarged the hole a little bit but not very deep since I wasn't going to be sanding them down anyway. After inserting the pins (I left them plenty long) I took a pair of hoof nippers and clipped them off. I find that by using the nippers they get me real close to the length I need and it is impossible to get them cut to short, since they won't allow you to get to close because of the design. The cutting edge sits back far enough that if you place them all the way against your handle material and cut it is just about right. Then I just bump them on my grinder to get them smoothed down just to where the pin gets round again. In other words grind off the V-shape that is left from the nippers and no more. With the nippers I have this leaves the pins just right. Then I just placed knife on the corner of my anvil where just the pin I was working on was touching and began to tap with a 4oz ball peen. A few light to medium taps then turn over and do the same. If for some reason it looks like you have more sticking up on one side than the other I think you need to take it off early in the process. Then just keep at it with light taps in a pattern around the edges with the ball end of your hammer. The hardest part is getting them to feel absolutely slick from every direction. If they are not all they way down all the way around, you will feel a snag when your run your fingers up and down the handle right where the pin meets the scales. The best tip I can give you is to do it with nickel silver pins. It wasn't bad at all. It only took me about 15-20 minutes to do all of them on this knife. If I had used stainless (I did for the pivot pin of course) I would still be out there! I hope this helped.
Bill
