Heating wooden scales before mounting.

Nikov knives

Nikov knives

Well-Known Member
Once again old thread maybe.
Let's see. First i make a full tang knive. I mount a wooden scales (not stabilized). And after few weeks or months - HA! The wood shrinked and expozed the corners of the tang. Just a tiny part of the edge, that you can feel with your fingers.
So, if the wood is heated in a box on a lamp of some heater that holds arrownd 20-30C for a few hours just before mounting, would that be a + for the shrinking? Wood shrink before gluing?
 
The answer is this.... ANY natural handle material you use WILL move. Even stabilizing does not prevent it... only MINIMIZES it.

Non-stabilized natural handle materials will expand/contract much more than their stabilized counterparts.
Temp and humidity are the culprits. If you heat the handle material prior to putting it on a knife, it will expand, and then, a couple of days after you've installed the handles, they will have shrunk to match the environment, and likely more than you want.

Specific types of woods, and other natural materials exhibit expansion/contraction much more so than others. If your not using stabilized materials, the best recommendation I can give you is to allow materials to sit around for 3-6 months in your shop before using them. This allows the materials to "acclimate". Even then, if you send the completed knife to a different region of the country/world, where the weather conditions differ from where you are, chances are very good that within a few days of the knife's arrival, the material is going to shrink or swell.
 
Yep, Ed is telling you the straight of it. All natural materials are going to change with the environment.

And yes, you can use a home made heat box to dry the wood to help control the amount the wood reacts to changes to humidity.

Not sure that 20-30 C will do though. Being in the US I'm on the F scale. ;~)

But if I'm remembering right, that's only in the 80-90 degrees F range. What you need is a way to circulate air that's in the 120-140 degrees F range over the wood for a couple weeks.

The goal is to get the moisture content at or below 7%. Right now it's in the 25-28% in your neck of the world. Mechanically forcing out the moisture collapses the woods cellular structure and stabilizes it.

It's like a raisin. Once it's dried into a raisin, it will never be a grape again no matter how long you soak it in water.

To build a simple home made dry kiln, just build a rectangular box with that's say 8" x 8" and a little longer than the piece you want to dry. Then elevate one end a foot or so higher than the other. Then put a light or heat lamp in the opening at the lower end. The lamp will heat the air, it will rise through the box and circulate hot air over the wood. Make sure the wood is setting off the bottom of the box so air can flow all the way around it.

The heat box works, and will in time dry the wood. But it takes a lot more than a few hours...or even a few days.

The easiest thing to do is to buy kiln dried wood or have it stabilized as Ed says.
 
Not to confuse this any more, but I believe when "stabilized wood" is referred to for knife handles, its wood that has been infused with an acrylic resin, through the entire piece of wood.

Larry
 
Good point Larry! I was assuming that he was talking about infused acrylic, but that might not have been so. Good catch!
 
Same question - different substrate: What is the best way to "stabilize" stag? I know there is a lot of moisture it "green" antler but if you allow it to dry naturally, you get micro-cracks (or at least thats what I've seen on some old sheds been laying around the shop). Would a mineral oil soak be of any benefit? sorta replace the moisure with oil...?
 
I've seen antler/stag stabilized, and have tried using it. I absolutely did not like it. The look of the finished handles are somewhat hazy, and it totally changes the feel of the stag.

Stag and horn are two materials that tend to "move" a lot. I've tried a number of things over the years to seal or "stabilize" it...there was always some drawback(s) that made me dislike the results. I treat antler or horn the same as I do natural woods....I leave it sitting in the shop for at least 3-6 months before I use them, and after finishing a handle, I give the handle 2-3 good coats of carnauba wax. This really doesn't solve the "moving" issues, but the wax seems to help seal the handle somewhat, and is the best solution I've found outside of fully stabilizing the materials (which bring with it the "dislikes" I spoke about earlier).

With any natural handle material, the best way to accomplish things is naturally, especially when it comes to drying.
 
I also think, that after I mount the scales the whole knife should be left for a few days in a warm place before grinding and final finishing. (Damn, I hate to wait :mad:)
 
Nikov knives said:
Once again old thread maybe.
Let's see. First i make a full tang knive. I mount a wooden scales (not stabilized). And after few weeks or months - HA! The wood shrinked and expozed the corners of the tang. Just a tiny part of the edge, that you can feel with your fingers.
So, if the wood is heated in a box on a lamp of some heater that holds arrownd 20-30C for a few hours just before mounting, would that be a + for the shrinking? Wood shrink before gluing?
Click to expand...

i put my wood scales in a food dehydrater overnite after mounting, but before finish grinding
 
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