Grip idea: canvas wrap and wood glue. Also, grip ideas thread.

C

Chopaholic

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I hate bare wood handles on anything with a passion, no matter how they're finished. My whole life, I have always pathologically wrapped the handles of axes, machetes, hammers, and similar tools with various materials I've experimented with.

I'm going to try something new, maybe with one of my Cold Steel tomahawks for starters. I got an 8oz canvas drop cloth and I'm going to cut maybe a 1" wide strip off it, soak it in wood glue, and wrap it tightly around the haft in a descending direction so that the overlaps provide additional traction. The idea will be to creat a micarta-like grip that is effective, but also hard and non-compressible so that it doesn't get snagged and pose difficulty when drawing it from a bell loop, and it should also be water resistant and look much nicer than friction tape or tennis tape, etc.

Anyone ever tried anything like this?

What are your favorite grips?
 
Chopaholic said:
What are your favorite grips?
Click to expand...

Best I've found is Maxiflex Ultimate gloves. They're thin. They fit tight. You maintain 90% of finger dexterity. And they grip like hell.
https://www.amazon.com/Maxiflex-34-...1536500228&sr=8-2&keywords=maxiflex+gloves+xl
ATG-34-87X-MAXIFLEX-ULTIMATE-370x470.png
 
My dad swears by crinkle-textured work gloves. Personally I prefer bare hands with everything I do, and the few times that I actually need them for safety reasons I'm typically wearing my HexArmor gloves that aren't really optimum for axe use--I wear those for tasks like picking up barbed wire, broken glass, and rusted thin metal. If you go the route you proposed, though, I'd suggest buying some canvas or twill webbing/tape rather than cutting strips from a drop cloth. Being woven as a strip keeps the edges from fraying on you during the process or in use.
 
Dont see how cavas soaked in glue will look any better than tape.Bet you could inlay micarta in a tomahawk handle and be ok.Like useing this one alot its white oak,tiitebond 2,crack sealer rubber and hockey tape feels like kraton.




 
Well, I'm trying it right now, with a frontier hawk with a crooked haft I don't care about. The canvas should look better than tape for the same reason a forced patina looks better than paint.
 
My axes and hammers go bare wood all the way and won't use any hammer or axe...ect with any other form of handle.
However my machetes are a different story.

What I did with my machetes is give them a cotton twine wrap then coat it with melted beeswax.
It'll absorb it and it'll help lock the whole thing togeather.
It's natural materials as well, and in my opinion natural materials feel best.
 
I have used re-grip on a few of mine. It is relatively inexpensive, easy to put on, and provides a little better grip and a bit of cushioning.
 
So I finished my experiment. I don't have pictures because my phone's camera is destroyed, sorry.

The first one, the frontier hawk I mentioned, didn't turn out so well due to excessive fraying.

I tried again with another haft I had laying around, but this time I folded about 1/2" of the 1 1/2" canvas strip over to eliminate fraying. Instead of soaking it in the glue, I smeared the glue over the haft then wrapped the canvas on tightly and quickly, being careful to maintain the fold for the entire length. This time it turned out very well, just as I imagined. The grip feels like micarta and prevents sliding and shifting of the hand during use, causing the tool to feel lighter and more controllable, though it is not quite as good as tennis tape in my opinion. The fold ended up producing something like finger grooves throughout it's length. It looks rustic and nice, unlike modern materials like friction and sports tapes. It is completely hard and non-deformable and can slip out of a belt or belt holster without resistance, allowing for a fast, smooth draw just like bare wood. Many other grips can foul a draw due to tackiness and foaminess creating resistance against the materials used to hold the weapon, like leather. Should be waterproof too; the fabric is completely impregnated and plasticized with waterproof wood glue. The glue is non-toxic by the way.

The results are very promising. This might become my new standard way of treating tool and weapon grips. If I can find a way to get pictures later I will.
 
Very cool idea. I feel the same way.

I stumbled upon a very cheap but effective product at Lowes/Home Depot called Fiber Fix. It's similar to what you have done, but very easy to apply. It only comes in black as far as I know, though.

The basics of this stuff is that you wet it and wrap the handle. It sets up like a hard cast. They actually market it as strong enough to repair a shovel handle that's broken in half.

I use it to wrap pretty much all my handles. I wrapped the handle of my cold steel viking hand axe to protect the haft from missed strikes where blade missed the target and banged into the wood. Its held up great for over a year of use.

I like the gritty grip to it so much that I used it to wrap an oak walking stick I made in order to give it more of a blackthorn look. I covered it in a light shellac in mute the tape look of it, and it's held up really well. Turned it into a 3lb gentleman's walking cane that could probably shrug off a machete attack:D
 
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