How To Best way to put handle on skeletonized tang?

[NDGuy]

I ordered a Montana Knife Company Speed Goat and was wanting to put a wood handle on it vs the paracord. Is there any specific way to do so that would hold better? Can you run pins through the empty space or is that a bad idea?

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Pins or sex-bolts.

 

[NDGuy]

Pins or sex-bolts.

So just drill the holes, pin and fill the steel voids with epoxy and not worry about coming loose or shifting?

 

[ea42]

Those handles are extremely skeletonized. You could trace out the voids onto a piece of micarta or even thick plastic, cut the tracings out and fit them into the voids so that they're snug. Epoxy them in place then go about drilling holes and attaching your handles. Alternatively if you weld you can weld a couple of strips of steel into the voids that are wide enough to drill your pin or bolt holes through.

Eric

 

[Taz]

I would just use lots of epoxy (JB Weld or Kwik Weld) when doing the handle to fill the gaps when epoxying the handle scales on. You can also fill the skeletonization where you want the pins to be with the JB Weld first, let it harden and then drill the pin holes through that so the scales don't shift around on you when they are gluing. I did some handle scales on skeletonized blades before and it was a pain to get the handle scales to stay where you wanted them and not shift around while the glue was setting up!

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Epoxy will do it fine. If you wanted to you could fill the voids first. Use PC7 or a putty type epoxy. Put the knife down on a sheet of waxed paper. Put the epoxy in the voids and smooth it out. Let cure and then file/sand the excess flush. Mount the scales as normal from there.

 

[Natlek]

Epoxy will do it fine. If you wanted to you could fill the voids first. Use PC7 or a putty type epoxy. Put the knife down on a sheet of waxed paper. Put the epoxy in the voids and smooth it out. Let cure and then file/sand the excess flush. Mount the scales as normal from there.

Sure , but some light weight wood would do same much faster and cheaper

 

[David Mary]

If the cut out is shaped right you don't even need to fill the void. For example:

 

[JoeBusic]

Sure , but some light weight wood would do same much faster and cheaper

Balsa is good. Even foamed plastics work great. Easy to shape and glue.

 

[NDGuy]

Thanks fellas appreciate it