Help With Micarta

grease-man

grease-man

Joined
Apr 9, 2006
Messages
1,499
Hey Guys...

I'm trying to finish a knife with antique ivory linen or canvas micarta, I can't remember which, since it's been so long since I bought it. Anyway, I've got it hand polished to a 400 grit finish. Seems to be pretty good, but the problem I'm having, is that every time I go over the stainless corby bolts, it gets somewhat dirty around the bolts and a few other places on the handle. How do I clean this? Acetone and denatured alcohol won't get it out. It's my first time working with this stuff and I'm not sure where to go from here. This is a user knife, but I'd like the end consumer to put the dirt on the knife! :) Any help would be fantastic! Thanks. -Matt-
 
That sounds like ivory paper micarta -- give it a good scrubbing with a toothbrush and some Dawn dishwashing liquid and very warm water, then if there's any dirt left, spray it down with some WD40 and rub it with a clean white cloth/paper towel.
 
Hi zerogee...I'm pretty sure it's not paper, due to the little checkerboard pattern that I'm seeing. It's a pale yellowish color, perhaps I was wrong on the antique ivory part. I'll try your suggestion and see if that will do the trick. Thanks. -Matt-
 
It's not ivory paper then, though it sounds like it's behaving rather similar. Ivory paper is a pain to finish clean.
 
I jus tried out the dish soap and WD40...worked real well, but I see where the problem is now. After cleaning it i noticed that the spots with the heaviest dirt/discoloration were not quite as polished as well as the rest of it. I'll have to go back and touch those areas up, after that I"ll do it again and hopefully have a clean handle! Thanks for the help! -Matt-
 
Like you, I've found when working with linen micarta that areas that are a different shade are usually so because of scratches. I work a lot with black micarta, and in order to get that uniform color/darkness, you have to make sure you get out all of the previous grit scratches and get the micarta uniformly finished.

--nathan
 
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