This past summer, I purchased a cheap sgian dubh from a local shop. It was of rather poor quality and the metal trim tended to snag my expensive hand knit hose. However, the blade was pretty decent so a couple of weeks ago, I set about re-building it. Here's the result.



I hand shaped the handle from a piece of "birds-eye" sugar maple and capped it with padauk, an african hardwood, then carefully sanded it through 5 grades of sandpaper. I applied 2 coats of acrylic varnish and then machine burnished it with pure carnuba. I'm quite pleased with the result. I'm going to try another with a bit more shape to it. A good wood lathe is about the same price as a heavyweight kilt. Hmmmmm.....