A year or two ago I picked up a Norwegian made Helle Puukko knife blank at the OKCA show. I really like the style of the blade and it is laminated carbon steel. It would make an awesome bird and trout knife.
I have never made a Puukko before, and I think I only have two or three in my collection, so it’s not a knife I’m really very familiar with. I started doing some research on the web looking at custom Puukkos to see how I wanted to build this knife.
Since I really didn’t have the materials to build a ferrule over the end of the handle I used a piece of .040” brass and did not drop it down into a guard as most puukkos I have seen do not have a guard. Moving up the handle the next ring is horsehide, followed by a piece of oosik about 1-1/4” in length. The rings in the middle are leather, brass, white spacer, red spacer, black spacer, red spacer, white spacer, brass then leather. The rest of the handle is a piece of deer stag with the crown polished on the end in my logo in set into the crown.
Getting a good fit around the tang on the first piece of brass was the most challenging part, and next came the drilling and fitting of the final piece of stag.
This is only the second or third hidden tang knife I have built. I don’t do them very often so each one is a learning experience and this one was kind of fun. However the most challenging part of this build was not the knife but building a sheath to fit it.
I used tanned leather for the sheath, which I shrink around the knife and then hand stitched the sheath together. I had to find two or three tutorials on building a Puukko sheath to find one but I like that looked like it would work with this particular knife. It only took me two tries on the sheath and two tries on the strap get them right. I am not at all and accomplish leather worker, in fact this is only about the fifth or sixth sheath I have made. I was pleased with the stitching on the sheath and the fit of the knife into the sheath. The leather is very tight around the handle and the knife is very secure, which is a necessity since there is no strap securing the handle to the sheath. I used the strap type belt hanger for the sheath, the design for which was taken from a Puukko sheath tutorial on the British blades forum.
I did take a few pictures of the sheath making process and can post them if anyone is interested. I did not take step-by-step pictures while making the sheath as I was too busy trying to figure out the process myself. I dyed and finished the leather myself.
I hope you enjoy the pictures.
