Micarta experimentation

T

Thunter124

Well-Known Member
Started yesterday working out how to make micarta scales, first test I used 15 layers of fiberglass cloth, set for around 24 hours, which gave me this ugly thing
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the 15 layers was no where near enough to try allot of shaping with, as its only about 1/8th of an inch thick, though I decided to go ahead and hacksaw it a bit and use some files to shape it a little, and see about drilling holes to match my practice bar

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this thing is ugly as can be

few observations made: the fibers did not become impregnated with the epoxy and fray on any angled sanding, More epoxy is needed to make it more uniform, MUCH more layers of fabric, Needs longer set time(paper towels I used to cushion against my vice stuck to it), need more pressure on the clamps to bring the layers together better. Also: fiberglass is itchy, and I will never use it again. I'm really glad I only did a small one with the fiberglass cloth, It would have been a frustrating waist of time to do anything bigger.

but, I Just got back from a shopping trip and snagged a yard of tan canvas material, I'm going to cut out around 35 12inchx2inch strips and epoxy them tomorrow. I look forward to applying and advancing what I learned from run 1!

also does anyone have a good recommendation on how to finish up on micarta?
 
To cure the burn and itch of fiberglass take a bottle of the wife's fingernail polish remover to the shower with you, the cheap kind that has acetone in it and a wash cloth. Saturate the wash cloth in the fingernail polish remover and wash the afllected area. Then take your normal shower with soap and water. The acetone in the finger nail polish remover is mild enough not to hurt but strong enough to melt the fiberglass fiber stuck in your skin and that is what causes the burn and the itch! It will usally stop all problems by the time you exit the shower!!!!!!!!!
 
Will do, I'm thinking it'll probably be around the 4th generation before I can get a good hang of it, so there should be a few weeks of updates, this next one I'm going to cure for 3 days so it sets up good.

C Craft said:
To cure the burn and itch of fiberglass take a bottle of the wife's fingernail polish remover to the shower with you, the cheap kind that has acetone in it and a wash cloth. Saturate the wash cloth in the fingernail polish remover and wash the afllected area. Then take your normal shower with soap and water. The acetone in the finger nail polish remover is mild enough not to hurt but strong enough to melt the fiberglass fiber stuck in your skin and that is what causes the burn and the itch! It will usally stop all problems by the time you exit the shower!!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...
Now THAT would have been helpful 3 hours ago

T. Hunter
 
Nice. I am another newbie, who has considering trying to make my own handle material. That being said I have played with epoxy more than a couple of times. I think G10 is usually fiberglass based, whereas micarta is other stuff. But I'm not 100% on that.

Ideas. Maybe try a lighter weight fiberglass cloth, that should help with the fraying. You could try some of pigments for your epoxy. In a "How to" for micarta I ran across somewhere, they compressed it. I think that was to make the cured slab easier to work, ie less fraying.

Overall, I jealous that I didn't try it first. Well I guess I have a new project, hehe. But keep it up. I'll be following to see your results.

-David
 
Oh, I'm not the first, plenty of others have made them with great success. For compression I used 2 foot-long sections of hardwood and some spring clamps, which probably was not enough compression, so I'm going to switch to some twist clamps for the next run.

T. Hunter
 
You might want to take a look at the tutorial I put on Cliff Fendley's website when we were learning to make it. Maybe there are some tips there that can save you some trouble. http://www.fendleyknives.com/LM105.htm

In our opinion, for common colors and styles, it's cheaper to buy it than to make it. We only make it for unual patterns that aren't available commercially.
 
I was asked to make some custom Jolycarta a few weeks ago. This was my first foray into laminates in a looong time. I've never been partial to the stuff and only made a couple knives with it. This is the method I came up with and turned out to be very simple and effective.

I cut some scrap 2x2 box tubing in half as a mold and some scrap aluminum box tubing as a squishing device . Lined the mold with wax paper and started laying in cloth strips, working the epoxy in with my (gloved) finger. It takes about 22-28 strips to achieve a finished 3/8". When lay-up is complete you fold over the ends of the wax paper, put on the squishing tube and tighten it up in a vise. (luckily I have 3 vises set up) After the initial tightening I wait a couple minutes and give it another light crank on the vise. Wait overnite to set up, remove from vise and let the whole thing sit for at least another day. Then you're done. The first set was made from the background cloth, the second set was some camo cloth and the last set was an old chamy shirt with a couple of dark layers as liners. These were experiments but came out better than I expected.

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Hope this helps someone considering trying it.

Rudy
 

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hikerdude07 said:
I think G10 is usually fiberglass based, whereas micarta is other stuff. But I'm not 100% on that.
Click to expand...

You are correct. G10 is fiberglass and epoxy and micarta is typically canvas, linen, or paper and phenolic resin. They are similar, but different. They are enough differences that its good to be accurate on which is which.

Thunter124, I am with you on the itchiness! Before we started cutting our G10 wet the dust drove me nuts! I would be itching all over for the next couple days. At least its not as bad as CF
 
Well lets hope that canvas wont make me itchy because its time for!

ROUND 2!!!

differences from last time: this time using canvas instead of fiberglass, c-clamps to get everything tight instead of $1 spring clips, baggy to hold the stuff instead of sandwiched in between two plastic strips, using a dip and lay method as apposed to ladle and spread.

here is a quick overview of the stuff I'm using: fiberglass epoxy resin stuff, around 35 strips of tan canvas, hardwood blocks and clamps, a trash-bag to keep it the table clean, mixing cup, gloves, and I'm trying a baggy this time to hold the block.
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alright so this time I decided to try pouring all the resin in the pan and then dripping strips, squeezing out the excess and layering em on the table as seen in Mike's stuff. I liked this method much better as well and will probably do it this way from now on, the only thing is you have to be quick about it, I missed 7 pieces of canvas in the end when it started to set up on me. I'm sorry I got no pics of doing this as I am only one person, but this is the finished piece
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(note the gellitan-ized bits that came out with the last strip)

At this point I started to clamp up the the bag in the blocks. It took a good bit of fumbling to hold the blocks together, in one position and still manage to keep the clamp in line and tighten it at the same time, next time I'll clamp the bottom piece to the table like Mike(there's a pattern here...). Unfortunately the first time I got it in the blocks the edge decided to squirt out the edge, along with melting the bag I put it in.
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I would also like to point out that this apparatus was starting to generate a lot of heat and getting increasingly harder to deal with, but non the less I managed to get everything straitened out.
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first things first, what have I learned: listen to your elders; epoxy gets hot; secure your rig, never work with it loose; speed is key; ziploc bags can and will melt with heat and pressure; find more hands

I hope this turns out well, I'm going to wait until at least Tuesday before breaking it out its mold. for run three I think I will take some of our scrap steel and mock up the rig at the end of Mikes LM105 pt 3. Hopefully I can get more space worked out in our workshop


T. Hunter
 
Yes, you do have to work fast. That's why me and Cliff like to work together on it so we can move it along faster. One person dipping the pieces and the other person stacking works well. The West System epoxy we use gives us about a 20 minute window before it starts set up. When it does start to react it does get HOT. We have seen smoke rising from it and it got so got that we couldn't hold it even with gloves on when trying to twist it.
 
Ill see if I cant get my dad to help me next time. Couple questions for you also, what all materials have y'all tried, any paper or just fabrics I have a lot of bright origami paper(I'm a master of origami, years of boredom in classes) that could make for interesting scales.

I had one thought today after looking at your angle bar rig, what if you used angle bar to block off the ends of the mold, then cut the fabric to fit into the mold. Calculate off of the mold the volume of it and then measure out about three quarters of that in resin, then instead of dipping or spreading on every layer you pour into the mold at set layers of the fabric. Say like start at the bottom of the mold(covered with thick contractor bag) with a thick layer of resin, then 5 layers of fabric, another layer of resin, 5 layers of fabric, and so on depending on thickness and porousness of the fabric in question. Then the press bar that you use for the mold will compress the resin through the layers of the fabric instead of spreading outward due to all the angle bar. Now a few things that I see as complicating this: resin not flowing between all the layers(would require layer control and more porous fabrics) as well as the resin leaking out without a proper seal around it(luckily Ive learned a good few sealing techniques through origami)

now this could possibly be test three, or maybe test four depending on how test 2 comes out, I may need more run through under normal conditions before moving on.

T. Hunter
 
So far we have just used cotton materials. We did find that all do not give the same results. It looks like the higher thread count materials work better. The last pieces I made turned much better than some of previous attempts. I used material that I bought at a fabric store. I didn't realize it would make so much difference so I didn't keep notes of exactly what the material composition or thread count was.

My only concern about saturation method you described is to make sure you get full saturation in each layer. If you have an air pocket or dry spot it's going to show up big time when you grind into it.

Edited to add: Freezer bags won't melt.
 
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Out of the three experiments I've done recently, I found that the chamy (chamois) shirt material worked the best. Maybe the cotton fleece type knit holds the epoxy better (?). It came out looking and working closest to real linen micarta. BTW, although it's somewhat expensive, the Crystal Clear epoxy I use gives me 40 minutes work time and is as they say...crystal clear when dry.

Rudy
 
Yea the ziploc was fine after all, it was just a tear in it. I broke the block out clamps, couldn't manage to wait until Tuesday, but I wont work on it until tomorrow. I really need to increase the layer count, this is nowhere near enough to make something workable.

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I have got to find the clear epoxy as that just looks horrible, got a good supplier Joly?
 
Thank ya kindly, new rig is jerry-rigged for tomorrow, we'll see how my idea works out. Its a 3/2" x 9" channel so It wont be a very big slab, but I'm going to press my layer count as much as possible.
 
When I was building my canoe, I always dealt with raka epoxy, http://www.raka.com/. They were always very help. You may like to try a slower setting epoxy. This has less heat build up, since it has more time to disperse. It will also give you more time to work with things and use thinker material because of more soak time. The only hold back is that it can up to 3 days to set, and a week before you can work with it. I would suggest giving them a call. Just as a warning, good epoxy isn't as cheap as the stuff from the big box stores.

-David
 
We use the West System epoxy and get it from a local auto repair business. It is very expensive but we have been impressed with how good it looks and it is super tough. I don't know how much the brand of epoxy has to do with it but the stuff we made is almost indestructable and in our tests it proved to be much tougher than some of the commercial Micarta that we bought.
 
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