For my most recent birthday, I was gifted fancy ebony wood "scales" to use on a knife blank. I always love gifts like that because it forces me to learn something new.

You can never have too many clamps! The process started by shopping through various knife blanks available at Woodcraft. They have a wide range of cool stuff, but are surprisingly light on the instructions. So if you find yourself browsing, you’re probably better off doing your research and finding assembly instructions elsewhere.

The knife I ended up with is a 67-layer damascus nakiri blade. The handle assembly was generally straight forward, but the challenge was figuring things out as I went along. The result isn’t very impressive, but I did manage to style it with some maple veneer I cut on the table saw - which was leftover from the recent cutting board project.

I’m very happy with the new knife. It was used tonight to make quick work of some tuna sashimi.