Hey,I just recently joined JD and decided I'd make my first real post.I am studying engineering in the 5th semester and have to do an internship so i thought why not make something fun out of it.As I was egerly awaiting to order a Shanklesong/now waiting for it to arrive I thought why not build a Bali on my own.I live in Germany so I can't make one with a live blade but a trainer is fine.As I did not know how much time I had for it I decided to just try and imitate the Squidtrainers handles as the are basically just some milled aluminum chunks and i randomly found a piece of aluminum which had about the perfect size for 2 handles.So first I cut the aluminum chunk in half and then milled the 2 halfes into the right thickness:Then I started to mill out the channel:I got a sweet little "stair" where the tip of the blade belongs so that it will fit in there tight:They are about 12,8mm x 12,8mm x 114,4mm but I will shorten them a little bit in the end when I give it the final finish and make them perfectly even/change the length to change the balance if it is not good.This is what the handle looks like after all the basic milling:Then I took a 4mm thick piece to stell and milled it a little bit from both sides to get to about 3,4mm-3,5mm and added holes for the pivots:Afterward I sawed/filed it into the rough shape of a blade (tanto-ish) and started to drill holes in for my cut-out design:Here is a pic with all the holes (I am thinking maybe i should have left it with those as the allignment looks pretty sweet imo but it was still to heavy like this) :This is how it came out in the end (my initial design looked a little different but I did not had a file small enough to work that precise) :I also crowned the spine a little:Next up on monday I will press fit some ss pins in the handles as zen pins (and I chamfered the handles a little bit somewhere in between) :I am also waiting for hardware to come in which I hope will be of ok quality as there are only a handful of shops in Germany that sells pivots/washers.As this is the first time I ever used a milling machine/other more professional equip so I am pretty happy with how good it went.I also only have a ccc at home which has a weird size I eyeballed most of my specs on the blade/tried to imitate the Squid handles as mentioned before (please no hate for this).Will be continuing on monday and post more updates if there is any interest (: