Leather Handled Puukko

This morning I finished the handle on the Polar blade that I wrote about in the previous post. As my first stacked leather handle, I am quite proud of how it turned out.

The handle is stacked leather with green canvas Micarta spacers and hand-hammered brass. I sanded the handle to shape on my belt sander with a coarse belt and then did the final sanding with 100 grit Aluminum Oxide sand paper while the knife was in my bench vise. After sanding by hand, I dusted off the leather dust and used Bick 4 leather conditioner and a piece of canvas to burnish/polish the leather.
 
The only thing I might change about the knife if I were going to do it again would be the glue type that I used for gluing up the leather. I used Titebond II glue which I have seen recommended in some tutorials on line, however I think I would not have had such pronounced lines between leather pieces if I used an epoxy. I noticed that there is a little darkening of the leather at each junction and I think this might be from the glue interacting with the steel tang of the blade. Anyway... I am overall very pleased.