After a couple of months my family has decided it's safe to visit my folks again and so I'm back in the shop today to fix this knife for a friend (who knows it's cheaper to buy a new one). As you can see it fell on the drying element in the dishwasher (which it shouldn't be in):

Note the much higher quality rivets I will put in place to secure the new handle; they're $15 by themselves! Not to mention the 50 year old dry aged art grade dark walnut wood I'm putting on for new scales.

Drilling out the old, cheap rivets is easy:

See this rust? Don't put your knives in the dishwasher folks......

Seriously. It's going to drive water in and rust it:

Okay we're back! I got distracted talking to my dad about family history and such.

Here we have cleaned the Tang in preparation for a new handle:

The scales have to be hand sanded to match the bolster angles:

Much better:

I managed to get the holes in the right spots and in a straight enough line; now to set the shoulders for the pins:

I'm using a special drill that will allow me to set the shoulders centered around the existing center screw pins. I've set the drill press to stop at a specific distance each time.

Unlike the cheap press rivets these brass and steel screws will hold longer and stronger:

Glued and screwed! Time to let the epoxy set up before profiling and shaping up the handle:

The epoxy has set; time to get back to work:

Roughed out; time for lots of hand sanding now:

Lots of scratches to remove:

So many scratches:

Making slow but steady progress:

Note to self; proper time with the files save you time and sandpaper:

Whoops; going to have to fix that:

The "downside" of fixing that; I've now put a better finish on part of the blade.

Well; might as well fixed it all:

I don't suppose it'll hurt anything to see what the buffer has to say:

"Oops I accidentally added a 0 to the end of the value of this knife!" is what the buffer had to say:

(Note: didn't do a full Hibben level mirror polish; I didn't grind the blade and this is a simple touch up job)

The real reason y'all are watching this thread: