- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 303
Thought I'd share in case this gives anyone some ideas.
I decided to rehandle a Scrapper 5 and didn't realize that it has a hidden stick tang. I ended up building up four layers of micarta wrapped around the tang. I wish I would have taken some WIP pics but didn't want to get resin on my camera. Hopefully I can pick up a cheep wireless shutter release down the road.
To start out I clamped some scrap brass to the ricasso to act as a base to build up micarta against, and then clamped the blade to my bench. I applied oil and plastic wrap to areas that I didn't want resin adhering to. Then wrapped with strips of fabric soaked in fiberglass resin. Tightly wrapped with plastic wrap and then a tight layer of masking tape. Once the first layer cured, I removed the tape and plastic wrap and did a quick sanding on the belt sander leaving the surface rough. At this point the brass had a good base to butt up against so I removed the clamp and just taped in place. Second layer was wrapped on and then the whole thing put in a foodsaver bag and vacuum sealed. This packed in the micarta pretty tight and sucked out excess resin. Again a rough sanding on the belt sander and repeated the wrapping and foodsaver steps two more times until the handle was three or four times the size I wanted for the finished handle. The rest was just sculpting, filing, and sanding to finished shape. One pro about the foodsaver bag is that they way it compressed gave me a nice center line to reference all the way around the handle, pretty much as if it came out of a mold.
I did find that using some paint and epoxy solvent helped me clean up the area where the handle meets the blade. Used a brass scraper to scrub away some of the unwanted material.
Any input or advise?
I decided to rehandle a Scrapper 5 and didn't realize that it has a hidden stick tang. I ended up building up four layers of micarta wrapped around the tang. I wish I would have taken some WIP pics but didn't want to get resin on my camera. Hopefully I can pick up a cheep wireless shutter release down the road.
To start out I clamped some scrap brass to the ricasso to act as a base to build up micarta against, and then clamped the blade to my bench. I applied oil and plastic wrap to areas that I didn't want resin adhering to. Then wrapped with strips of fabric soaked in fiberglass resin. Tightly wrapped with plastic wrap and then a tight layer of masking tape. Once the first layer cured, I removed the tape and plastic wrap and did a quick sanding on the belt sander leaving the surface rough. At this point the brass had a good base to butt up against so I removed the clamp and just taped in place. Second layer was wrapped on and then the whole thing put in a foodsaver bag and vacuum sealed. This packed in the micarta pretty tight and sucked out excess resin. Again a rough sanding on the belt sander and repeated the wrapping and foodsaver steps two more times until the handle was three or four times the size I wanted for the finished handle. The rest was just sculpting, filing, and sanding to finished shape. One pro about the foodsaver bag is that they way it compressed gave me a nice center line to reference all the way around the handle, pretty much as if it came out of a mold.
I did find that using some paint and epoxy solvent helped me clean up the area where the handle meets the blade. Used a brass scraper to scrub away some of the unwanted material.
Any input or advise?
