Micarta Handles

Q

Quiet Priest

Joined
Jul 27, 2001
Messages
182
Hi all, I bought a 605 knife kit and gave it to a friend, I had bought the upgrade kit with the micarta slabs. He put the knife together just fine, but I see that the micarta is not nice and shiny on the sides or where he sanded it down to round out the edges. What do you do to make the micarta look good?
Thanks
 
If it is linen micarta, sanding through progressive grits to at least 800, followed by buffing will do the trick. It it is canvas micarta, it cannot be brought to a high polish, but rather provides a "grippy" texture.
 
Super glue used as an acrylic lacquer (which is sort of what it is, I believe) finish might make it shiny. Use several coats. I haven't tried this myself, but hear it works on some surfaces.
 
Don't use superglue as a finish on micarta, as it is unnecessary. Superglue finishes are found on wood handles as it seals the handle and coats it with a thin plastic coating (acrylic, or whatever the glue is) and it is the glue that gets real shiny. Micarta is an epoxy and base material laminate, so as long as you sand and then buff, your handle will get real shiny. The eopxy in the laminate shines up like superglue coated handles.

By the way, I have only ever sanded micarta/g10 to a 400 grit and then buffed, adn I get good results.
 
Originally posted by Don Cowles
. If it is canvas micarta, it cannot be brought to a high polish, but rather provides a "grippy" texture.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ with you

sand to 600g, give it a coat of linsead oil, wait 2 days and buff

wondeful high gloss:D
 
I've never worked with micarta i couldn't polish. Sometimes, I does need a special treathment, like Mr Ericson points out. The idea is to polish the exopy, and remove the inbetween somehow, because it usually doesn't take a polish, but is very fiborous so it needs to be cut off somehow. Scotchbrite works good too, same with steelwool as preparations to polishing.

greetz & take care, Bart.
 
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