The Process

To repair this cutlery fork handle I did the following... 23/04/2023

1. removed the old broken wooden handle.

this required snipping a gap in the remaining old wood so the handle

could be removed sideways,

leaving the brass rivets still in the fork metal blade.

find which side of the rivet was the removable head and twist it off

with long nose pliers wrapped in rag so as not to damage rivet edges

remove rivets from blade and clean them all up ready to reuse

2. make a new handle.
   select a piece of 3/4” x 3/4” mahogany timber about twice the length of the handle.

cut the handle blade slot in the wood with a new fine blade in the scroll saw.

checking for width of gap exactly same as blade thickness and

length of the slot exactly to same as blade distance from last hole to

it’s square end.

the slot was exactly one side of the handle thickness away from the

wood reference face.

mark to exact centres the two rivet holes on one face the wood and

drill the two holes perfectly the right distance apart in the drill press

with the wood fully clamped.

drill bit was a 1/8” diameter (old imperial size of the brass rivets)

check the rivets fitted the new wood with metal on same face

once holes were correct...

set up the table saw with fence to slice the handle thickness off the end of

the wood piece.

cut the handle off the wood piece with the scroll saw.

with a bigger drill bit make countersunk recesses into all four holes

(each side of the handle)

in the drill press, again with handle fully clamped so no slippage of the drill.

use drill press depth stop to make sure countersink holes not cut too deep.

use a slightly smaller than 1/8” drill bit to locate the old handle over the new

scribe/mark around the original handle onto the face of the

new wood handle for shape/pattern

cut out the perimeter of the new handle along the scribed lines

with the scroll saw

hold the new handle in a good bench face vice and

with a really sharp block plane clean up the scroll saw cut sides all round

round over the long edges with the block plane

round over the circular handle end edges with a fine file

bevel chamfer the narrow end of the handle both sides

(at what will be the steel junction)

fine sand all surfaces

3. fix the new handle onto the steel ‘blade’.

mix up some 2 pot araldite ‘steel to anything’ glue

spread the glue over both sides of the steel blade

put a bit of glue in the handle slot gap at far end of the slot

slide the wood onto the blade

locate far rivoet into it’s hole

tap the near rivet into it’s hole

put the top rivet plugs into each rivet base on the reversed side,

tap rivets home hard

clean up all excess glue

4. light sand and apply two coats of Danish oil to the wood, let dry between.