advise on finishing handle against a full double hand guard on bowie

Have hidden pins in the scales, finish them and after that assemble everything

 

i finish the guard and handle material once its permanantly on the knife, as one piece. i would not be able to attach scales to a finished guard and finish the scales without harming the guard.

 

That's a hard area. Sometimes you can do it with a small wheel, if you can match the radius on the back of the guard to the wheel diameter. Another option is to use a scalloped belt and shape it that way. Another option is to pin and shape the scales prior to glue up, so you can finish everything independently. Or, go manual with taped off areas and a file or sandpaper to finish.

 

We want pics of the aligator bone

 

https://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1126014-Attach-Images-to-Your-Threads-Comments

You can use just about any image hosting site. I use imgur now, and I have used flikr in the past.

When using the service, make sure you are looking at the pic itself, not the snapshot of the pic.

 

I've inserted your image below. You need to use the link to the image itself, not the link to the imgur post. An easy way to get that link is to right-click and select "Copy image address".

 

So it is you with a knife like that against an aligator? How big an aligator do you take on with just a knife?

 

What you never saw Crocodile Dundee? That was a knoife!

 

The crocs down here are bigger than your alligators, so you need a bigger knife

 

If you try to square the end of the handle on the grinder, or by hand, it will just get shorter sand shorter as you make the gap move all around. At the same time the center by the hole gets slightly proud of the edge and the gap never seems to go away.

A really good trick on fitting a hidden tang handle to the guard without gaps is to reverse chamfer the end of the handle. Use a Dremel tool or similar with a cylinder burr.
Make the end slope inward toward the tang hole about 10-15°. This allows fine tuning the perimeter with a file until it meets all the way around.

I sometimes use pieces of carbon paper slipped down the tang and "tap" the handle against the guard to see where the high spots are. They show up black and I file that area only.

Final trick if you really don't want to spend a lot of time fitting the handle is to cut a pliable leather spacer and glue it to the end of the handle. Trim and sand the leather flush and finish the handle before assembly. When assembling the handle to the knife use enough pressure on the handle clamp to press the leather flush with the guard.