Ever try a stacked micarta handle?

V

VaughnT

Well-Known Member
I'm working on a bowie and am stuck on the handle.

Part of me wants to do a stacked leather handle, but I already have some brown 3/8" micarta that could substitute. I think. Haven't seen a similar handle, so I have no idea how it would look.

Lots of options out there, but....
 
I did stacked Micarta on this Scagel. You can't see the lines in the pic but you could tell it's a stacked handle in person.
DSCN2134.jpg
 
I don't see why not, it would surely hold up better than leather and if you use canvas micarta, you can get a similar "grippy" feel.
 
Here is another stacked Micarta I did a few years ago. I actually made three of these. The customer supplied the Whitetail antler because he wanted some off his farm and had me make knives for himself and his two sons for Christmas presents.

He just said he wanted Sharpfinger style blades with his antler and left the rest to me so I just gave it a Scagel look with the stacked handle. Basically used cutoffs of black linen and ivory paper micarta along with other spacer materials.

DSCN0918.jpg
 
That definitely looks good. If I can find a good crown, I just might go that route.

I do have one spike from an elk and there's enough in there to do two full handles, but the bark looks to be incredibly thin. The tip is broken off and looks to have less than an eighth of workable exterior. It's straight as an arrow, but maybe too thick with no room to taper it down at the guard. I'd have to build up a tapering region out of something else and only use the antler for the rearmost two or three inches. And it would require some kind of pommel to cap the end.

Can you peen the end of a high-carbon tang if you soften it with a torch? How do you not burn the handle material? Is that what they mean when they refer to a compression-fit pommel?
 
You will need to anneal the tang before any handle material is on it. I generally weld a bolt to the tang before annealing it.

This way you can attach the handle in various ways. You can thread the pommel and screw it on, or in the case of the ones above the handle is held by the acra-glass bonding in the handle material and around the threads and after the epoxy sets up I drill through the handle material and bolt and run the pin all the way through the handle.
 
I thought about that. It would be a lot easier to peen some all-thread, but it wouldn't look very good coming through the pommel and I don't have a flat-bottomed drill bit to drill halfway through the metal.

I'm thinking I might just chuck this one up to experience and see how far I can pitch it into the woods!
 
Weld or braze a nut to the end cap (depending on what material)is the easiest way or many times I'll make the but cap out of thicker stock, drill and tap it and mill away everything around the threaded area.
 
Is it true wrought iron or mild steel? Where did it come from?

Wrought iron is typically forge welded. Much of the bent "wrought iron" work you see today is just mild steel.

I have ran across something that gave me unexpected trouble when welding and figured I got a hold of some old wrought iron with a lot of slag in it. It will weld but you sometimes get a lot of porosity in the weld. Not something I would trust to a great deal of stress, it's alright for a lawn ornament.

The place in Louisville where I buy much of my new mild steel does a bunch of decorative work like railings and such. Many refer to that as wrought iron railings but the guy said its mostly made from mild steel today. The wrought iron work they do when white hot and is shaped by hammer. Wrought iron means "worked iron"

I have been told that sources for new wrought iron supply today is scarce and much of the true low carbon wrought iron used is salvaged from 19th century work.

I believe true wrought iron is very low carbon something like .04%. Mild steels typically run between .2-.6% carbon.
 
I hope I'm safe as I bought this wrought iron from the head honcho here. It's part of a grain silo being demo'd. Measures about .250" thick, so it wouldn't take much to turn it into a nice pommel for an antler handle, but I'm not too good at soldering and wonder about putting a nut on the back of it.
 
If its the bands or ladder on the block silos you can weld it. We've torn down a bunch of them over the years since our area for the last 30 or 40 years has transformed from a farming community to a suburb of Louisville. I've scraped tons of that stuff, probably enough to make the handles on a million knives. I know of two that will come down on a property being developed about two miles from my house but don't know yet if I'll get the excavating work. They contacted me for pricing but that's all I heard. They offered the silos to a neighbor of mine if he would move them because they are a burden to the developers.
 
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