Guthook and bolster help please.

Surthriver

Surthriver

Member
I had a family friend from Tennessee call me yesterday and asked me to make him a knife for deer season that had a guthook blade on it. Has anybody done this before that could give me some tips on how to go about doing it?

Also on this knife I want to do a handle with bolsters. Since I’m still really new at this, I’ve never done bolsters before. What material is the best for bolsters. Stainless? Wood? I have a nice little stash of Cocobolo at the house that I think would look really good with bright and shiny stainless bolsters. Is it ok to put bolsters on with the pins showing? Could someone please explain this process for me? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
416 SS is a pretty popular metal for bolsters and guards, but boy that stuff is heavy! I used 416SS for a guard/bolster on the wife's chef knife and it added a good bit of weight. She preferred the aluminum I used on another knife because it wasn't heavy. Either aluminum or SS will look good with a brushed or mirror polish job, but the aluminum will show scratches, marks, etc faster than the SS.

Brass really looks nice with a nice mirror polish, but it's also a soft metal so will show scratches. Brass or aluminum seems to be a bit easier to work than SS, but 416 SS is amazing how easy it works to be SS.

Pins? Well, that depends. Normally the pins should match the metal so when sanded out, they virtually disappear, but the wife fusses unless I use brass pins on her handles 'n bolsters. She thinks that brass is so pretty.

I would either go for pins exactly same metal as bolster so they disappear, OR go for a full contrast metal for the pins. I personally think a mirror finish on brass is about the prettiest around - but that's just me.

Oh, I forgot a bout the guthook. I've only done that once - my brother wanted a guthook on the skinner I made for him. That was back when I first started making knifes and didn't know just how little I did know. I just marked out on the blade where the guthook would go, took a small 4" side grinder and cut it in. Then filed the bevel from one side only, and sharpened with a file. They said it worked good, and were really amazed how sharp the cutting side of blade itself was. This was after heat treating blade so I had to grind gently so as not to overheat blade and ruin heat treatment.

Ken H>
 
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It only takes a few minutes to hog in a gut hook with an appropriately sized chainsaw file. To polish, use a slightly smaller diameter rod with a wrap or two of sandpaper, starting with 220 grit and going up to however high you want to go. The few I've made have no secondary sharpening bevel, the main bevel goes right to the edge and is sharpened the same way it is polished. You can bevel from both sides or from just one side, doesn't really matter that much.

Design the knife in such a way that the gut hook does not weaken the blade or interfere with using the point.

There are a couple of good threads here on bolsters... I've used copper, brass, and nickel-silver, use the same alloy for the pins if you don't want them to show or use a contrasting metal if you do. I get the bolsters shaped to near finished, then drill and countersink the holes. Solder or epoxy them in place on the tang, then cut the pins around 20% longer than the thickness of the bolster/tang/bolster sandwich... gently pein (or peen) the pins so the ends swell and fill the countersink, then file flush and polish. That's just the way I do it, there are of course many ways to skin a cat...
 
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