I had someone loan me a Dremel table saw and the little thing is just the ticket for getting everything straight on self nocks.

For horn reinforced nocks I set the blade and fence up to cut slices of water buffalo knife handle slabs the same thickness as the saw kerf. Those will be the pieces I use for the reinforcement. To make the cut they'll go into I set the blade heighth to match the depth of the cut (about 1&quot and the fence so the cut is right in the middle of the shaft. The actual cut is made by plunging the end of the shaft down on the saw blade while holding it against the fence (did that make sense?). The shaft is held straight up and down and this cut is made in line with the wood grain.

After glueing with epoxy and clamping the horn I do the nock cut in a similiar maner but have the blade adjusted for the nock depth. The fence gets set so I plunge in one cut, turn the shaft 180 degrees and do another cut. This gives me a wider than kerf cut that gets adjusted to the proper dimensions and shape with small hand files and sand paper.

Using this method I get a nice uniform nock that looks and works great. If I'm not using the horn reinforcement I wrap the bottom of the nocks with fishing rod wrapping thread before I apply gasket lacquer. The lacquer builds up in the nocks but it's really easy to remove it with a toothpick after all the coats are done before it's really hard. After the rest of the finish sets up hard I finish clean the lacquer out of the nocks with the small files for the perfect string fit.

Sounds complicated but it's really not too difficult. But it is time consuming.

Edited by - Grey Taylor on 01/05/2002 09:25:54