Copper pin spinning

T

Timberjack logger

Joined
Mar 15, 2025
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13
Im building some knives for a friend the blade material is of a crosscut saw thats been in his family for decades he wants it that way because thats where his people would get knife making steel when there saws wore out ,but anyway he brought elk antler sheds to me for the handles scales im using copper liners and wanting to use copper pins 1/4 inch diameter my question is should i anneal it before spinning . im trying to get by with less heat on the antler because of the pin dia. i searched but cant find much on copper pin spinning mostly brass .
 
I don't know why you hate yourself so much that you want to use copper liners and1/4" pins with elk antler. Copper is very difficult in knifemaking because it gets very hot very fast. It will un-glue the liner material if you are not careful. It doesn't glue well to start with. Pins can easily burn the antler around them, especially large 1/4" pins.

I highly suggest thin micarta or G-10 liners and brass Corby bolts. It will last another 100 years that way.
 
If you MUST use copper...1/4 inch is to much. If that is the look you are going for, a copper corby is a better answer. 1/8 inch pins would be enough, use two and peen them...carefully.
 
There's no need for such a huge diameter if you're spinning the pins. In spinning it's the head of the pin that holds everything together, diameter doesn't matter. You just need to situate the pins closer to the edges rather than centered. Six .086 or .093 pins on an average fixed blade handle would work just fine, especially if you're also using epoxy, plus there's far less heat involved. If you want to go with larger centered pins/rivets I was going to suggest compression rivets as there's no heat involved at all with them but I'm not sure you'd be able to find those in copper.

Here's an example of what I'm referring to with smaller pins. This was an 1873 bowie we did with spun nickel silver pins, I believe they were .086" diameter. If you have shorter handles you can definitely get by with four pins, and as others have mentioned you can peen them too.

Canal Street 1873 Bowie.jpg

Eric
 
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Please forgive me for being the idiot , i just practiced on spinning 1/4 inch pins ,putting on skidder winch brake liners . its not fun , LOL ,so i will go with copper corby bolts on my knife project an just set a end mill down on them to smooth out the screwdriver ends should work out good thanks for the trying to help .
 
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