Once the bolsters are soldered and you are ready to work on the scales, you need to make sure there is no left over solder where the bolster meets the handle material. I have taken a small piece of lathe tooling, sharpened it and stuck it into a file handle. Use the sharpened edge to scrape away ant residual solder. It’s comes off quite easily.
For my handle material, I have selected (actually my customer selected) a nice set of blue mammoth ivory scales.
To prepare for pinning the scales, mark off and drill your holes for the pins.
I use 1/16 416 SS pins for the scales
I will cut the scales a bit long before the actual fitting. The back of the scales are sanded down to the correct thickness before final fitting. When sanding mammoth ivory, you must not get it too hot or it will start to move on you. I will usually grind a bit and then press them against an aluminum plate to kind of cool them off. Once the proper thickness has been achieved, I sand the scales to length. A little trick I use for final fitting is to put the end of the scale against the grinder and move the belt by hand. This way, you are able to take of minimal amount of material. If you take off too much, you can never put it back.
Final fitting with holes drilled and ready for pins. In this case, I will glue the scales along with the pins to the liners. I don’t know about you but I get a bit edgy when I have to peen pins when using ivory or pearls. The pins will eventually be ground flush with the handle material.
