Micarta & G-10- collector (& maker) desirability question(s)....

I love the look of green canvas micarta when it's new. I hate that it turns brown later on.
 
Micarta will almost always be my first choice, Green Canvas, Natural Canvas, even Maroon. That being said the two knives I carry and use most have Orange G10, mainly for the visual and it just happened to be G10.

I had two knives from Phil Wilson that I used on my boat, he finished the Green Canvas Micarta a little rough to avoid slipping out of your hand.
 
Cool thread! I'm an exclusively fixed blade collector, & I certainly never ever use the terms micarta and G10 interchangeably, and I'd have to think most collectors don't. I vastly prefer, in most cases, micarta or highly figured wood to G10 for the main scale material. I understand why a lot of knife makers prefer G10, & you're not the only one I've heard that from at all, but I want you to understand that I as a collector value the materials for completely different reasons. It's all about texture, richness, feel, soul, etc....btw, I agree with you about the green micarta...the stuff does not age well. But build a knife with maroon micarta or a similarly shaded G10, & I will almost always prefer the knife with the micarta. G10 often, not always, looks & feels "cheap" to me, for lack of a less abrupt word. But ya, a nice wood with lots of movement & or character or a nice micarta will win my heart over much more steadily than a G10 scaled knife will.
 
Yeah I think the issue when comparing the strength, and specifically the brittleness of the two, really comes down to the WIDE range of quality between different "Micarta" manufacturers. For whatever reason, as I assume there are just as many sources for type material, G10 (and it's similars) don't seem to show as obvious a range of quality. I think it's just not as easy to mess up.

You can see night and day examples when comparing any type of vintage legit micarta, to modern random samples of those same types. Real vintage paper micarta and ivorite doesn't display that brittleness at all, and will saw cleanly without edge chipping with very course teeth and aggressive feeding. Much, modern paper micarta will chip out heavily on the corners of the cut, but not all.

Vintage linen and canvas micarta from what I've seen, is actually much less likely to chip or break in thin cross sections than modern G10 from what I've seen, but it's rarely the case with modern "micarta". You can observe the obvious differences of density and uniformity between the two by feel and the naked eye.

That being said, there is still some really high quality micarta being produced, Nathan the Machinist was recently selling bulk boxes of Acculam material that's very similar to the vintage stuff, and I'm guessing would give you a different perspective about relative strengths. As with most things, you get what you pay for though.
 
^ I do wonder if the material just naturally hardens some as it gets older? For sure, you can tell the difference between current production and vintage when sanding it, the old stuff is harder. Though sometimes the old stuff is more water absorbent, which is very much so not-a-good-thing. Good modern micarta today can be pretty darn good.



Norplex bought the Micarta name from Westinghouse and then started importing material and calling it Micarta. They do make some domestic specialty materials but it's the exception not the rule.

My shop manufactures fixtures used in automated fiber optics connector assembly and manufacturing. We used Micarta over aluminum for fixtures that go through an oven. The two materials have the same coefficient of thermal expansion (12 millionths of an inch per inch per degree if memory serves me) so an aluminum fixture can get a layer to shrug off the IR heat in the oven that moves at about the same rate to stay flat.

Things were good for a long time. Then the quality of the micarta went south and new fixtures wouldn't stay flat. At the same time knife scales wouldn't buff out the same and material would shrink away from tangs and pins etc.

Today, probably 90% of the phenolic products in this country are import and mediocre quality. But there are still domestic manufacturers. You just have to be careful not to accidently buy imported material, just because a parent company is American doesn't mean the material is.
 
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I try not to use the terms interchangeably because they mean different things to me, but I am sure I sometimes have referred to G10 as micarta. When I think of G10, I think of a glass epoxy laminate. When I think of micarta, I think of linen, paper or (my favorite) canvas thermoset in phenolyic resin plastic. They do not look or feel the same to me. I prefer the look and feel of micarta over G10, especially canvas micarta. Seems grippier to me. Tan, maroon, and antique yellow are favorite colors. But I also have some knives with G10 scales, so it's not a dealbreaker.
 
I have seen boat guys do that experiment with glass reinforced with the three common boatbuilding resins, polyester, vinylester and epoxy. Epoxy wins every time. Of course, it cost like 6 times what polyester does and those guys buy resin by the barrel, so tradeoffs happen. Because of cost and its resistance to UV, (you can use gelcoatfor the exterior instead of $100 a quart marine paint) vinylester is the most commonly used resin in that biz today.
woodster said:
i collect and make, i do not have any preference over either. i suppose someone could take two 1/16" pieces and bend them to see which one snaps first, to see which one is less brittle, but in a knife application it wont ever bend that far so it wouldent mean much. maybe one might chip easier than the other. is g10 perfectly stable ? meaning it wont shrink or move ?
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There's good info and discussion here. Thanks to everyone weighing in so far. :thumbup:
 
In the unusual circumstance where I seek out other than natural materials, I've always preferred to stick to vintage micarta. If I'm not going to use such a knife, then I sure as hell want it to look it's best, which micarta does, IMHO, way more than G-10. Some recent examples of Carothers/Arnold field knives in vintage micarta:


large.jpg
 
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you're amassing quite the Carothers collection there, Bob! Looking forward to adding another piece or two to it :)
 
I think that G-10 finishes more cleanly than Micarta does, meaning that with the knives I've seen and held, the G-10 cuts cleaner than Micarta. If you polish them out more, then the texture seems similar, but I agree with the above comment about the Micarta being more warm and having more of a soul. I think that , at least with linen Micarta, if you looked under a higher magnification you'd find many small "hairs" that give it that softer feel, as opposed to G-10.Canvas Micarta not so much.
 
betzner said:
In the unusual circumstance where I seek out other than natural materials, I've always preferred to stick to vintage micarta. If I'm not going to use such a knife, then I sure as hell want it to look it's best, which micarta does, IMHO, way more than G-10. Some recent examples of Carothers/Arnold field knives in vintage micarta:


large.jpg
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Those top two are awesome. Really like the butterscotch.
 
John I finally got around to taking some photos of that bird & trout knife I made with the G10 guard. I really like the way it came out and will definitely use it again.

birdtroutdc1.jpg


It's much warmer to the touch than steel, which will be appreciated on those wet & chilly days when you're fileting a fat brookie along the banks of your favorite trout stream ;)

birdtroutdc2.jpg
 
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This is my own personal preference and observations, but I prefer Micarta handles to G10 because the latter feels more plastic-y in the hand. I'll use both, and I understand why some people like one more than the other, but me personally I prefer the look and feel of Micarta over G10.

(Another thing, as a maker, that I like with Micarta is there isn't as high a chance the canvas and paper could kill me/permanently maim my lungs vs the fiberglass base of G10, but maybe I'm just a wimp :p )
 
ludo410 said:
This is my own personal preference and observations, but I prefer Micarta handles to G10 because the latter feels more plastic-y in the hand. I'll use both, and I understand why some people like one more than the other, but me personally I prefer the look and feel of Micarta over G10.

(Another thing, as a maker, that I like with Micarta is there isn't as high a chance the canvas and paper could kill me/permanently maim my lungs vs the fiberglass base of G10, but maybe I'm just a wimp :p )
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Nah, that Central Valley air will kill ya long before the G10:D:D
 
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