Advice for repairing Wenge handle

Fish30114

Fish30114

Joined
Jan 5, 2014
Messages
1,495
Well after a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I bit the bullet and bought a belt grinder and made my first knife. I dove in full force and used a piece of Alabama Damascus steel, and a piece of Wenge for the handle. Issue is that when doing the final shaping of the handle scales, I dropped the knife and it caused a small crack in the handle. It is a very small crack--I'll try and post pics later, and what I am looking for is advice on how to repair this crack--I do not want (won't) remove the scales at this juncture, so I am wondering if I could just use some wood sealer and would that do the trick? The grinds on my blade came out pretty good IMO, and I just want to finish up this handle and get a sheath built.

Thanks for any advice feedback.

Oh and PS, I bought an AMK belt grinder, and it is a really nice machine IMO---Next I've got to find a tool to profile my blades instead of grinding the daylights out of the raw steel blanks!
And oh yeah, WENGE is a great looking wood, but it really easily 'fracturable' (is that a word?) in other words it splits along the grain lines easily!!!
 
As far as profiling goes, I love the angle grinder.

I use the cutting disk to cut straight across any excess material that I can as close to my lines. From there I throw a stone disk on it, place it in the vice and let that sucker EAT away anything that's left. I can profile a knife in like 10 minutes like this. (Of course, the stone disk is rather merciless, you have to be careful and will still probably have to clean up some spots with the grinder or files.)
 
saturate the crack with thin super glue. when dry sand smooth. apply additional coats of glue if you need to fill a void.
 
A bandsaw is much preferrable to an angle grinder for profiling blades. It is more controllable, less dangerous, and doesn't spread abrasives in the air like an angle grinder. Super glue for the crack.
 
A high tension hacksaw will cut quite quickly. Drill holes around the profile when it changes direction and play connect the dots with the hacksaw.

Wenge is a dense wood, not very flexible. It will crack, but no worse than other dense woods in my opinion. If it was not completely dry, it will check as the moisture comes out of the wood.
 
Good feedback folks, I was leaning towards CA glue for the crack, so good to hear that's advisable. As to cutting out my blades, I've been thinking of a saw in a swag stand, just not sure which saw, SWAG recommends the Milwaukee(sp?) also what blade should I get if I go that route?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top