Micarta + gasoline + match = a comfortable handle ?

[Cougar Allen]

Okay, maybe soaking handle materials in gasoline and trying to set them on fire is a little ridiculous (to say nothing of shooting them) -- but it's fun! More seriously, there are a lot of other materials used for handles besides G-10 and Micarta, and there are serious questions in the minds of some of us about how much abuse some of them can take.

Shooting might actually be useful for comparison purposes. A while back I tested Miracle Weld, a kevlar-filled epoxy putty, by hammering on it. I degreased a piece of galvanized steel I had lying around, stuck a lump of the putty on it, waited a day to make sure it had fully hardened, and then started hammering on it. I worked up to full force blows with an 18 ounce (.5kg) carpenter's hammer and was unable to break the bond or shatter the stuff, only marring the surface a little.

I think that was a pretty good test -- since I obviously didn't mind if I destroyed the test lump you can believe I hammered it as hard as I could. There's still an unknown there, though; how hard is hammering as hard as I can? (Not likely the same as hammering as hard as you can.) There would be more of a problem if the bond had failed while I was working up to full force. Then it would be difficult to explain how hard I was hammering it when it broke.

It could be useful information if somebody wants to buy one slab each of a number of different handle materials, shoot them, and post pictures of the damage. That would be a consistent test. We would still have the question of how much a material can be damaged by a bullet and still hold up in normal use, but at least we would be able to compare materials and say this stuff takes impact better than that stuff.



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-Cougar Allen :{)
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This post is not merely the author's opinions; it is the trrrrrruth. This post is intended to cause dissension and unrest and upset people, and ultimately drive them mad. Please do not misinterpret my intentions in posting this.

 

[Blilious]

Well Cliff - if it's not acid - may I suggest nuclear testing??

Oops, somebody already claims his knives stand to it....

[This message has been edited by Blilious (edited 02-28-2000).]

 

[Cougar Allen]

Guns are more readily available than nuclear weapons. Come to think of it ... that's a good thing, isn't it? I can just imagine Cliff's reaction to that Busse ad ... if he could get his hands on a nuclear weapon....

Hmm ... it ought to be much easier to get access to an Abrams tank ... we wouldn't even have to borrow it, just put a knife in its path and see what happens ... which model of Abrams is shown in that Busse ad? The model with the depleted uranium armor is heavier....

Well, we don't need an actual tank, if we can find out what the track loading is, and I bet somebody on sci.military.moderated can tell us that. Just lay the knife on the ground, put a steel plate over it, and load it to the same pounds per square inch ... not as much fun, maybe, but just as good a test. I suppose it would depend on the soil's resistance to compaction ... we really ought to test it with different soils....

If anybody is seriously thinking about shooting different handle materials, I suggest a .22 rifle -- because everybody has one, and variation in barrel length in a rifle has little effect on velocity, unlike pistol barrels.


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-Cougar Allen :{)
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This post is not merely the author's opinions; it is the trrrrrruth. This post is intended to cause dissension and unrest and upset people, and ultimately drive them mad. Please do not misinterpret my intentions in posting this.

 

[Howard Wallace]

Back in the 70's I was engaging in a sit-down protest of a logging operation, and a logger ran a bulldozer over my foot. It didn't hurt, as my foot was simply pushed into the soft dirt. The ground surface will be critical for a tank test. In other words, being caught between a rock and a soft place isn't much of a problem.

The burn tests are interesting. I've wondered about the behavior of different handle materials when soaked in LOX. I will propose the following tests for our brave testers.

1. Soak the handle in LOX, put it on an anvil, and smack it with a hammer.
2. Soak the handle in LOX, and then expose it to an open flame.

After all, you never know when you're going to have to take your knife into a cryogenic oxidizing environment, and you wouldn't want it to let you down.

 

[e_utopia]

Why doesn't one of the custom makers toss a completed knife in the forge, to see how the handle material would hold up to re-forging the blade without removing the handle, in case someone ever is in an incredible hurry to fix something on the blade, and doesn't have time to take the handle off?

--JB

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e_utopia@hotmail.com

 

[aflatfoot]

FYI. Before you try it, I can tell you that soaking yourself in gasoline for 15 minutes then lighting a fire will have dramatically different results. Although, the handle will probably still feel warm.

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Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!
**Blazing Saddles**

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Cougar :

It could be useful information if somebody wants to buy one slab each of a number of different handle materials, shoot them, and post pictures of the damage.

No arguement here, what I would be most interested in is how the stress would be transmitted to the steel. If the material for example survived the impacts but the tang shattered how much use is that. It might actually be better to have a slab material that broke apart but absorbed the impact and thus protected the tang.

This for example was why I set the grip on fire rather than using a sample of Micarta. One of the things I wanted to see is if there would be enough heat transmitted to effect the grip to handle bond.

if he could get his hands on a nuclear weapon

If? Why do you think I chose the field I did?

I suggest a .22 rifle

Cougar, roughly how much variance can you expect from round to round?

-Cliff

 

[Cougar Allen]

Uh oh, we're in trouble now ... we should have known better than to tease Cliff Stamp ... last I heard Canada had decided not to build nuclear weapons, but they could change their minds at any time.... :O

Using the same rifle and the same brand of .22 ammunition (and not buying the cheapest ammo you can find) in the same weather conditions I think you'll get roughly 1600 feet per second and around 10 feet per second or less variance between shots. That's off the top of my head but I think I'm close. Temperature isn't critical; the difference between summer and winter would probably be a little greater than the variation between cartridges. A headwind or tailwind has an effect, of course. There are guys on rec.guns who can give more precise answers -- everybody and his hamster has a chronograph these days, and top-level target shooters are willing to go to all kinds of trouble in search of a tiny advantage.... Premium .22 target ammunition costs around ten or twenty times as much and is slightly more consistent. I think the ordinary grade should be fine for our purposes; the difference between handle materials should be much greater than the variation in ammunition.

-Cougar :{)