thought i’d start a new thread to show you guys how far i’m doing.
With a lot of old and broken tools thrown away i’m pretty much left with a handsaw, various sanding tools and a dremel and draper hand tool.
So today i decided to start the horn bachi so i could get a feel for materials.
I marked out the shape in pencil and then used a sanding wheel to mark out a shallow groove as a guideline for the saw.
Second picture is my failure of an oak bachi in process, it may yet be rescued.
Amanda,
Awesome! That is so cool to see the progress! Thanks for sharing!
yeah . . . looks . . . badass . . . woohoo seriously 
(blush) thanks guys,
being limited by small scale handtools can be a pain, but if i do a little everyday then it soon adds up.
The amarello is a little hard to hand saw, much harder than the horn.
I am in love with the horn, so easy to saw and shape, i am really excited to think how the blade is going to shine…
Looking forward to the sanding as well, i love seeing how rough things suddenly have more life to them.
Amanda,
Your welcome. Also looking forward to see your progress as you continue with this! Hope to see more pics when your done! You just might inspire me to try to make my own bachi too! Thank you!
ナイス！！！！
That’s gonna be pro, Amanda!
After you get confident in making them, perhaps it’ll be time to have Bachido bachi made.
Great job Amanda ! It must be painful to use that type of handsaw on such type of wood , if you have a router maybe you can make a good guide by hand and use it to carve your next bachis !
What type of horn do you use ? I’m pretty interested because you said it was very easy to work with , do you mean easy as working with plasitc material ?
thanks everyone.
Florian: it’s not hard to use the saw on the wood, it’s just i have very little strength or energy and it takes a lot out of me.
That certainly is a good suggestion about a template, i wonder if the dremel router would be okay. I will have to investigate!
This horn that i have was some i bought off ebay:
It was SO much better in person.
I would say that it is a small bit harder than working in plastics with a hand saw, but not much. It produces a very smelly dust (smells like toenails) but is smooth like plastic to cut, unlike wood or metal.
right, am going off to cut a little more now, see you guys later.
I don’t know about the dremel router but it seems to be made for “easy” work , you can use a lot of force on it i guess . Maybe you would need to mount a bigger router as router table and using this kind of bit : http://www.bmbshop.fr/3643-3686-large/fraise-carbure-pour-corian-q12-d286-avec-roulement.jpg
this way you can see what you are doing .
Thank you for the link , i never thought horn could be easy to work , i never worked with it yet . Good luck on your bachi !
before i insert the handle i’m going to boil the horn to make sure it’s more flexible and doesn’t crack when i use an acrylic hammer.
It seems you CAN use a heat gun but it’s better to boil it.
thanks for your link.
wow cool! Perhaps one day we will be using Amanda Grove signature bachi 
Amanda, when you get that horn bachi done I think it will look really cool. In my opinion it would look even cooler than bekkou!
awww you guys are making my ego blush now!
It’s not that great, honestly, i can’t cut straight lines for toffee and i’m so slow at this it’ll take at least another 2 weeks to do.
(i LOVE the horn so much, the feel of it, the way it cuts, the way it finishes…i have a fair bit left over and i want to make a matching koma when i get one i can copy.)
by the way Amanda , last time we were talking about using fake tortoise shell for making bachi , i just told my boss yesterday about this and he got me 3 big plates of cellulose to make pickguards or plectrum , when i’ll finally be ready to work on the bachi i’ll let you know how is it to work with and if it’s worthy.
Anyways , give us some news of the progress and tons of pics !
o excellent! That was another choice i was going to play with.
Yes, more pictures after tomorows cutting… i’m almost ready to split the horn and boil it.
Just waiting on some gorilla glue now
Hey Amanda, you may want to read this fascinating article on some rigorous glue strength tests. They test Gorilla Glue (I was very surprised at the results), as well as wood glues and epoxies. It may make you think twice about using it. Not as strong as I thought.
Do you think those tests carry over to horn and wood as well? What do they use traditionally to bind bekkou to the handle? Gonna try to make my own horn bachi in the near future…
thanks kyle, that is seriously shocking actually.
I spent a long time thinking which glue to use as the bond between the horn and wood.
I wasn’t convinced that the glue used by the bekkou maker would work with horn (looks like superglue) so i spent ages thinking.
I’m honestly undecided now
Well , if you are sure you can clean up everything perfectly after gluing , super glue is a good choice . But be sur to work very clean , super glue is a real pain in the *** to clean up.
But now that i used my brain (not very often) i wonder if it will work , horn as a lot of pores everywhere right ? It might just suck all the glue and not glue to the wood. Give it a try.
am wondering about using some araldite 2 part epoxy to be on the safer side.
Yeah, horn is porous so it is hard to decide
