Lauri #1: Oak, coins and a lunchbox.

I finished my first handle for one of the Lauri blades this week. I used one of the smallest blades and made a slim handle for it. I wanted to use silver and red spacers to achieve a nice contrast, and looked around to find what I could use. I ended up with two norwegian coins of 1 kroner (which already have a hole in the middle), and red plastic that I got from an old red lunchbox that had been lying around. Here is the result.

A shot comparing it to my opinel #8. It shows how small and slender this knife is. It is a nice whittling blade.

I am quite pleased with it, but there are a couple of things I want to do differently (read: better) on the next one. One important thing is to polish and sand off the pen-marks on the bolster before gluing the knife together. Another thing is that I want to warm up the epoxy a bit, so that it is easier to fill up the whole slot for the tang. I am not sure if I succeeded in that with this one, and therefore I kind of doubt that it`ll take a lot of abuse in the long run. But I started these 5 blades to learn, and I have learned a lot on #1, so I am a happy chap!