Long-winded details...
Rich Glisson (Durham, NC)
>I started out with hexagonal blanks about 1/8" larger than the hexagonal brass fitting. I oversized them to allow belt sanding later to make the wood exactly flush with the brass.
The brass fitting is threaded inside the big end and smooth inside the small end, so the end of each wood blank had to be reduced to 2 different diameters with a step in between. this would have been a piece of cake on a lathe, but since I don't have one I did it with some judicious saw kerfs and a chisel.
I shaped the brass fittings by hand on a stationary belt sander (brass sands REALLY easily), smoothing off the corners of the hexagonal part except where it was to match up with the handle, then touched them up with a file. Easier to do than it sounds--took about 5 minutes.
I tried to screw the ferrules on using a 1" socket and ratchet but was not very successful. The ferrules ended up being partly threaded and partly pounded into place. Basically, the wood kind of shredded instead of threading nicely. That might be a function of a) the wood (cherry and walnut in this case) and b)the diameter of the handle at the point at which I was trying to screw the ferrule on. I just carved the handle down to a cylinder by eye and it was a little lumpy. I think if you have a lathe you could do a couple test diameters to see which the ferrule could actually cut threads in. Maybe even taper the area so the threading can start more easily.
Once the ferrule was seated on the handle I went back to the belt sander and evened the wood up with the brass, then hand-sanded until everything was smoothed to my satisfaction. Tapered the back end of the handles a bit just for looks.
The ferrules ended up pretty tight despite the lousey threads, but since I was worried they might loosen I drilled a 1/16" hole through the brass (centered on a flat) in 2 places 180 degrees apart, then drilled ~1/4" further into the wood with a 1/32" pilot drill. I then screwed a tiny (size 0) flat head brass screw into each hole and filed the head off.
Then I driled a 1/8" hole in the business end of each handle and kind of reamed it into a flared shape by pivoting the drill. Then I stuck the tang in, put the tip of the rasp against a wood scrap, and pounded the handle on. Those rasps are really thin, and I was worried they might break, but they survived the pounding-on process.
Wiped the handles with some tung oil and called them done!
