care and feeding of kraton?

J

Juramentado

Joined
Aug 23, 2003
Messages
185
What do I need to know about kraton? What do I have to keep it away from? How do I make it last? what are the pros and cons?
 
It's soft, grippy, (basically a rubber) and makes for a fairly inexpensive handle material (reducing the price of the knife a bit).
Avoid excessive heat, cold, oils, halogenated organic compounds (i.e. certain strong disinfectants or household cleaners) and strong acids/bases. It will also wear down quicker than harder/reinforced synthetic plastics.

Cleaning it with toothpaste and then soap works well.


Personally... I prefer G-10, FRN, or other glass-nylon/etc materials to Kraton.
 
Good grip material, to a point. Really good when wearing loves, and when wet, at least for me; and warms up well in cold weather. BUT, it will slowly disintegrate with hard use, and it'll give you some serious blisters if you're not wearing gloves, if you're working the knife hard. I've cleaned mine with a diluted solution of dish detergent, and that seemed to work okay.

I have a Cold Steel Bush Ranger with kraton, that I'm going to re-handle, probably with stacked leather.

thx - cpr
 
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If you're in a buggy environment, avoid getting DEET on kraton. A little makes the surface pretty sticky and enough DEET exposure will break down the material.

When it's messy from field dressing game, I clean the kraton grip on my CS Master Hunter with a grease-cutting dish detergent, like Ajax.

DancesWithKnives
 
I used Griot's Garage Vinyl and Rubber conditioner on my SOG stingray Kraton handle and it totally destroyed it. It became a sticky mess that I could not remove. Sent it back to SOG and they replaced it with another Krayton handle. Wish I could find someone who could replace the Krayton handle on my SOG Stingray with something else. It does wear down.
 
Glenn Pitts said:
I used Griot's Garage Vinyl and Rubber conditioner on my SOG stingray Kraton handle and it totally destroyed it. It became a sticky mess that I could not remove. Sent it back to SOG and they replaced it with another Krayton handle. Wish I could find someone who could replace the Krayton handle on my SOG Stingray with something else. It does wear down.
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Hi Glenn, welcome to Bladeforums. Just as an FYI, you replied to an almost 12 year old thread, and most of the people in this thread have not posted in awhile. It's ok to start a new thread instead of resurrecting an old one. You might want to check in the maintenance & tinkering subforum to see if anyone has switched out the handle or if a knifemaker/craftsman is offering such a service.
 
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