Should I just throw this guard away and start a new one? There's some pretty big gaps.
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OK this one is possibly fixable. You won't know till you try!
First picture
First off the area where the guard slides up against should not be squared off! Squaring the blade off at that point, can and will cause a stress fracture during the HT process. Take a round file and instead of the area being 90* file that area with the round file. When you fit the guard against it. You can place the blade in a vice, wrapped of course of in such a way not to scratch the blade. Take a round pipe or similar against the back of the guard. As you bump it you will see exactly what you need to remove. The idea is too
under-fit the area and bump it forward to get a tight fit!!!
Second picture
This one is a bit harder to fit. First remember always
under-fit You should be cutting checking and just when you can get it too start you are probably pretty close. I have a piece of pipe that is slightly squashed on the end. Often I get it too where I think it will slide but you can't get it too. Put the blade in a padded vice or similar, heat the guard red hot and put it over the knife's tang and bang it home. You can use a chunk of other wise useless leather to pad the pipe against the guard. Whatever it is the heat is gonna be burning it up so that will increase your need to get it done!! You can put a wet rag around the blade as a heat sink to keep from messing up the blade but usually there is not enough heat transfer to create a problem!!
Now to deal with what you have their! You may be able to lay the side of the guard on your anvil and take your hammer and whack the opposing side from the anvil. Sometimes it will close up and not be seen and sometimes you may not be able to close it! See how you have more gap in the middle of that cut! That is going to make it harder to close but sometimes you can make it close. A lot depends on the material the guard is out of!
In your case I think I would try and close this gap before I tried to get a better fit to the back of the Ricasso. Because if you can't close this gap it ain't gonna matter how good it fits the Ricasso.
I hope this helps. Others may have different ways but this is what I would attempt at this point. Next one make it tighter than dick's hatband as they say! File a stroke and test the fit, file a stroke and re-fit, sometimes it seems like for ever to get it
just right!!