I have an elk crown that I want to use for a handle on a particular knife. I had to grind off a small sticker and of course it leaves a porous surface where the blood once flowed to that sticker. I've tried various methods of filling these areas and trying to match the dense, white bone that surrounds them. None of the methods I tried worked very well. Anybody have a proven method?
-
The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is available! Price is $250 ea (shipped within CONUS).
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/
Filling antler porosity
- Thread starter Jay west
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2013
- Messages
- 408
Never worked with it, but you might try a mixture of epoxy & ground up antler from the off-cut chunk. Mix it up into a compound, work it into the "end grain" from the blood supply & then wait for it to kick off. Once it's hardened, you could sand & shape it. At least it would be the same material as the original antler & look similar.
Try a test piece first to see how it looks!
Try a test piece first to see how it looks!
I'm not very experienced with knife making but one thing I have done working on guitars is to fill cracks and holes with bone dust.
I always try to use some of the actual material I'm working on so it matches in color.
Make sure you have a good clean area to work in, (a clean table top is fine, and no fan or wind blowing) take a good clean file or diamand stone and file a scrap piece until you have plenty of dust to fill the problem area, carefully fill the areas with the dust and blot in water thin CA. If you have large areas to fill you will have to build it up a little at a time.
I have filled nut slots on guitars this way when the slot was cut too deep and even with metal strings under tension rubbing on it it will last for quite a long time.
When you build up your repair bring it up proud of where you need it and then sand it back flush. This should be every bit as tough(maybe tougher) than the original piece.
I always try to use some of the actual material I'm working on so it matches in color.
Make sure you have a good clean area to work in, (a clean table top is fine, and no fan or wind blowing) take a good clean file or diamand stone and file a scrap piece until you have plenty of dust to fill the problem area, carefully fill the areas with the dust and blot in water thin CA. If you have large areas to fill you will have to build it up a little at a time.
I have filled nut slots on guitars this way when the slot was cut too deep and even with metal strings under tension rubbing on it it will last for quite a long time.
When you build up your repair bring it up proud of where you need it and then sand it back flush. This should be every bit as tough(maybe tougher) than the original piece.
I definitely overlooked that, good thinking.
Cyanoacrylate- essentially super glue or crazy glue, but you need the watery thin kind not the gel, and you want a little slower set up time than the run of the mill stuff. Like I said 2p 10 works great for me and you can get it on eBay fairly cheap.