I decided to try and use my piller drill to mill out the slot as I've always found it to be a very lengthy and tricky process to do it by hand. I like making stick tang knives but fitting the bolster puts me off.

First Pass

Checking for size

Second pass!

I cut the block out so I could then make a larger hole at the back.








To make sure I drilled the bigger hole in the correct place, I drilled a smaller hole through from the front first before turning the block over and drilling with the larger bit.



Next, I did some more work on the Wrought Iron bolster for the Mike Blue Damascus blade.

I wanted to put a groove running round the side, so using a great tip from an American called Erin Burke, I used a dremel cut off disc in my pillar drill to score a line parallel to  the front face.





I then used a small round needle file to make the scored line wide. The file followed the line of the dremel disc easily.


The groove was widened using a larger round file and will now be smoothed with wet 'n' dry.