Thanks all! I am considering putting a false edge on the tip to make it a little less forward heavy, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea yet. Maybe I will just use it for a while and then adjust accordingly after I get a feel for it. I wanted it to at least look historically accurate and the originals didn't have a false edge that I could tell. I tried to use walnut for the handle scales, but I screwed it up twice and ran out of walnut. I found a local specialty lumber store that sold that Katalox and it looked nice, so I bought a 10 dollar board of it. I briefly wondered if I could make a bow out of it, but I don't think it is flexible enough. I know it is crazy hard though, harder than Ipe!
Those bolts were a giant pain - I started out just trying to use 1/4-20 brass bolts and hex nuts, but the nuts were to thin and the thread to coarse so when I went to grind it flat it ate through the nut and it popped off the screw shaft. My Dad worked in the mines and give me a big piece of "brass" that they used as shims for continuous miners. I say "brass" cause I figured out pretty quick it was an alloy with some kind of ferrous metal in it - brass isn't supposed to be magnetic or that dadgum hard! But, the sheet was 7/8 inch thick, so I cut squares out of it and then tapped the squares with a 1/4 X 28 die, then rounded them off to 1/2 inch diameter on the grinder and with a file. took a bit and there was some cursing and rework, but it came out looking pretty cool to me.
I was surprised at the shine I could get on 5160, I didn't expect it to shine up that well at all.
