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Owning a saw with a shapely handle is a delight to the hand
and the eye, but all too many saws have rather clunky, machine-made
handles that are more likely to give you blisters than pride
of ownership. Not to worry—one woodworker plus a little
know-how equals a handsome, new, custom-made handle.
The first thing to do is choose a handle pattern. Simply
tracing a favorite existing handle is the easiest option.
Alternatively, you can search for patterns on the Internet,
or you can select the more flexible option of taking a photograph
of a handle you admire and enlarging it to scale. There are
literally dozens of designs to choose from. That's what I
did for this atypical design—traced the outline and
transferred it to plain paper.
My advice is to create a template first, rather than gluing
the pattern straight to your chosen handle wood, just in case
you have to start over. If you have the correct sizes of forstner
bits, using them will make dealing with the inside curves
effortless, leaving the remainder to be sawn out. A scroll
saw gives the neatest finish and results in minimal clean
up. However, I have used a bandsaw, bowsaw and even a coping
saw.
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