What are the strengths and weaknesses of each material? I know quite a bit about micarta but not much about G10. The reason im asking about them is the other day my BM Rukus snagged on my seat belt, was pulled out of my pocket, and landed on my driveway as I was getting out of my car. A decent size piece of the G10 portion on the scale was chipped but the micarta was unaffected. I was pretty surprised to see a chunk that size missing from such a short fall. I read on here that G10 is more expensive to manufacture than micarta but its not quite as strong. If so why do so many manufacturers use it? In my mind G10 is ugly and I always prefered the look of and feel of micarta.
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Micarta vs. G10
- Thread starter MikeMade™
- Start date
It must have landed just right. I've dropped my BM975 I don;t know how many times and it's fine. Personally, I like G10 better, but I only have one Micarta handled knife. It's nice but it's pretty smooth. Somebody said Micarta will grip better when wet or maybe when you get some sweat on it... I can;t vouch for that.
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- Jul 30, 2006
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Here is some information on G10:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4245397#post4245397
Micarta is a bit more generic than G10. G10 is specifically layers of glass fabric embedded in epoxy resin. Micarta can be any number of materials embeded in any of several resins. Both are relatively impervious to water or chemicals.
G10, being a fiberglass laminate, has its strength in the flat plane of the sheet. It is less strong when impacted from outside the plane of the sheet. When struck from that direction, the properties are dependent on the epoxy resin, which can be brittle. Usually, laminates on knives have steel backings. (yes, I know there are exceptions, but generally they do.) The backings help make up for the lack of strength outside the plane of the sheet. Depending on how the G10 is processed, it can be quite grippy. The epoxy resin that is the matrix in G10 breaks down under ultraviolet radiation such as that found in sunlight. It takes a lot of sunlight, but it could happen. You would need to leave it in direct sunlight for 3-6 months and would notice a chalky surface. That would be the epoxy breaking down. G10 was designed as material for circuit boards. The specification that defines it is pretty open as to physical properties. And you don't need great physical properties to make a circuit board, so you pretty much don't get them. (If it costs more, and it's not in the spec, you don't get it.) Making epoxy resin tough takes more expensive ingredients than not making it toughened. So you tend to get kind of brittle stuff.
Micarta is based on cloth or paper instead of the type of glass fabric in G10, which is more open. Micarta has more strength in the non-plane direction because of the nature and orientation of the reinforcement fibers. The cloth is a tighter weave than the fiberglass, so it has more strength outside what we would call the x-y plane. It may or may not be sensitive to UV depending on what resin was used. It's somewhat denser than G10. Sorry there is not as much info, but as I mentioned above, micarta covers a lot of materials, so it's hard to give specific data. G10 is fairly specific.
Hope I covered what you wanted to know.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4245397#post4245397
Micarta is a bit more generic than G10. G10 is specifically layers of glass fabric embedded in epoxy resin. Micarta can be any number of materials embeded in any of several resins. Both are relatively impervious to water or chemicals.
G10, being a fiberglass laminate, has its strength in the flat plane of the sheet. It is less strong when impacted from outside the plane of the sheet. When struck from that direction, the properties are dependent on the epoxy resin, which can be brittle. Usually, laminates on knives have steel backings. (yes, I know there are exceptions, but generally they do.) The backings help make up for the lack of strength outside the plane of the sheet. Depending on how the G10 is processed, it can be quite grippy. The epoxy resin that is the matrix in G10 breaks down under ultraviolet radiation such as that found in sunlight. It takes a lot of sunlight, but it could happen. You would need to leave it in direct sunlight for 3-6 months and would notice a chalky surface. That would be the epoxy breaking down. G10 was designed as material for circuit boards. The specification that defines it is pretty open as to physical properties. And you don't need great physical properties to make a circuit board, so you pretty much don't get them. (If it costs more, and it's not in the spec, you don't get it.) Making epoxy resin tough takes more expensive ingredients than not making it toughened. So you tend to get kind of brittle stuff.
Micarta is based on cloth or paper instead of the type of glass fabric in G10, which is more open. Micarta has more strength in the non-plane direction because of the nature and orientation of the reinforcement fibers. The cloth is a tighter weave than the fiberglass, so it has more strength outside what we would call the x-y plane. It may or may not be sensitive to UV depending on what resin was used. It's somewhat denser than G10. Sorry there is not as much info, but as I mentioned above, micarta covers a lot of materials, so it's hard to give specific data. G10 is fairly specific.
Hope I covered what you wanted to know.
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2004
- Messages
- 12,957
From another post and thread.
STR
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4282637&postcount=11
STR
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4282637&postcount=11