How do you finish your wooden handles?

W

Wildewinds

Joined
Nov 20, 2006
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I'm a woodworking hobbyist. I recently finished my first knife handle and I'm not happy with the finish. It came out a bit too satin-ish for me. While I want it to be durable, I still want it to be shiny. I don't know the best way to do that with a knife.

Care to share your techniques?
 
I will usually hand sand my wook knife handles with some 400 - 600 grit sand paper, then work over them with 0000 steel wool. Then for the untilmate of smooth finish, try rubbing with brown shop paper towels. As for a shinier finish, try using water thin crazy glue on unstabilized wood. Works beautifully.

Later,

Charles
 
280 grit final finish and several coats of Watco. Paper towel dry, then coat with caranuba wax.
 
It really depends on the wood. With maple, you just sand it to where you want it, dye it if you like and then beat on it with boiled linseed oil until it won't soak up any more. Hit it with some fine stel wool if ya like to get the gummies off, then wax and be on your merry way. With walnut, you probably want to finish it like a gunstock so you can fill the pores if they are a problem. Now I need some advice on what to do with the really oily tropical hardwoods. Brazilian rosewood is pretty easy. The one time I used ironwood wasn't that bad either. Unstabilized amboyna seems to react well to the linseed oil finish too, but it is pretty porous,so it soaks it up big time. .But now I have ebony, blackwood, lignum vitae, tulipwood and olive. Any suggestions?
 
I have tried many different finishes on my wood handles and until I started using Bruce Bumps method I was never really satisfied with the results. I have tried super glue finish (actually not to bad imho) many different polyurethane products(always a drip,drop,sag or something I don't like) Linseed oil (nice but too much dry time between coats) Bruce turned us (BF) on to his technique a while back and this is what I use from now on too ..... WaterLox to seal the wood and simply 6-10 coats of Tru-Oil. Sand between coats with 600-1000 grit paper.Thin the Tru-Oil by 1/3 with mineral spirits. I have been using Min-Wax finishing wax prior to shipping them out.The last wood handled knife I sent out I put renaissance wax on and didn't see any difference (its supposed to be sooo good). This is a simple almost fool proof ,nothing can go wrong finish and I like it ;) BTW , I believe Tru-Oil is linseed oil with additives that help it dry much , much quicker than straight linseed oil
 
I have tru-oil. I thinned it out too much, I think, and I didn't sand between coats. How long do you wait between coats?
 
jdm61 said:
.But now I have ebony, blackwood, lignum vitae, tulipwood and olive. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

African blackwood and tulipwood are true rosewoods. I doubt that they need more than fine sanding, optional buffing and maybe waxing. They've got lots of oils of their own.

Lignum vitae is even more so. The stuff grinds like wax -- the sawdust tends to clump together I followed the advice of someone here, sanded to 600 grit and buffed with no-scratch white to "bring the oils and wax up". As soon as the buffer hit it, it looked like there was fresh oil on the surface. It didn't need anything more.
 
Wildewinds,
It may be easier to get the answers you want if you explained exactly how you did it. I personally sand to 220, then apply teak oil until it won't take anymore. Sand with 400, 800, 1000, 1500 then buff with fabulustre. Then renaissance wax. Many people do it many different ways.
Matt Doyle
 
mdoyle said:
Wildewinds,
It may be easier to get the answers you want if you explained exactly how you did it. I personally sand to 220, then apply teak oil until it won't take anymore. Sand with 400, 800, 1000, 1500 then buff with fabulustre. Then renaissance wax. Many people do it many different ways.
Matt Doyle
Click to expand...

I soaked it in Teak oil for 24 hours, wiped it off and let it dry. Then I followed these directions for a handrubbed oil finish: http://riflestocks.tripod.com/sfinish.html

The woods for the handle are ebony and cocobolo. Mostly ebony.
 
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