Favorite waxes for hand buffing wood handles?

[milkbaby]

polishing talk aside, that handle looks very good. In what order are you gluing and cutting the handle pieces? first glue the 3 diagonally cut pieces and then cut them to slabs or vice versa?

Just guessing that alignment issues would be less when gluing up blocks cut diagonally then resawing into scales, but I usually buy precut scales so I cut and carefully sand everything so they will mate well.

I tend to do it two different ways depending on how I feel. Sometimes I just want to get started on something, so I'll glue up the cut wood pieces without gluing them to the liners, then flatten before gluing them to the liners. This requires a little less prep and lets me get right into doing something and feeling like I accomplished some work (because sometimes the first step is the hardest). Other times when I feel like spending some quality time sanding figure 8s, I'll prep everything and glue it all up at once. Just a reminder not to crank down on any clamps to avoid a glue starved joint.

So these were scales cut and glued with spacers, then flattened and glued to the liners. The advantage is the pieces only need to be flat to each other, not 100% squared all around. That's the first pic. Then before the second pic, they were flattened and then glued to the liners in the pic.

The other way is probably how everybody else likes to do it because it means only gluing once. Everything is cut, 100% squared up by sanding and dry fit testing, then glued.

 

[Lee Hester]

Your handles are gorgeous. What type of wood is the darker one on these handles?

 

[Bill DeShivs]

I like the baloney sammich!

 

[milkbaby]

Your handles are gorgeous. What type of wood is the darker one on these handles?

Thank you for the kind compliment!

The first handle is red morrel burl with a blue dyed maple burl. The second handle is honduran rosewood burl with yellow cedar burl.

 

[lorenkinzel]

I've used scotchbrite belts on many, many blades. I've never used one on a handle. I would handsand to a whatever grit is appropriate for that wood and then wax and buff with an old tshirt or cotton ball or something of that nature.

What works well in lieu of hand sanding is a Crayola brand kids' toothbrush with the bristles cut off. Then, put sandpaper face down & stick-on some of that 2-sided foam tape made for hanging pictures. You can then cut the sandpaper to desired size/shape. Peel the backing & stick onto the toothbrush. It gets into pretty tight compound curves & is great for wet sanding with mineral spirits between coats of whatever. The back & forth circular motion makes for a good polish. The toothbrush is about 6 bucks at Target.