My handle cracked

[S.Alexander]

So I put together a through tang, with a piece of amber dyed elk. There is a copper ferrule on it as well.

I drilled out all of the pith, and filled it with g Flex epoxy. The nut was hand tightened on. Everything looked fine after I finished sanding and finishing the handle, and I definitely did not over heat the handle by sanding.

So I went back and looked at the knife today, and there are 2 hairline cracks all way down the handle. One on each side.

What the heck happened? Is it still okay to use? I'm thinking I'll just keep it for myself now

 

[Lieblad]

......

 

[S.Alexander]

Yeah my only theory was that the epoxy expanded and the pressure caused the crack. The antler acclimated here for about 6 months before I used it.

 

[Storm Crow]

You can heat the epoxy to soften it if you want to remove the handle and try another one.

 

[Greenberg Woods]

If I had to guess I would think the epoxy heated up as it cured and manged to thermally crack the antler

 

[LARRYZ10]

S. Alexander, A fellow knife maker gave me some advice for attaching Elk antler to a hidden tang knife. His method was to whittle a piece of wood to roughly fit into a hollowed out Elk antler and cut it off flush and then fill with a slow cure (24hour) epoxy. Then drill and broach out the hole to fit the tang. This reduces the amount of epoxy greatly and expansion and /or shrinkage is minimized. Try that next time. I hope this helps on the next one. Larry

 

[Bill DeShivs]

The epoxy didn't cause it, or there would be epoxy seeping out of the cracks.
Drilling the handle either caused the cracks, or caused instability in the antler.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

What Bill said, plus I bet you used 5 minute epoxy. That stuff gets really hot in curing. That heat probably made the stresses from drilling/grinding cause the cracks.

 

[Natlek]

So I put together a through tang, with a piece of amber dyed elk. There is a copper ferrule on it as well.

I drilled out all of the pith, and filled it with g Flex epoxy. The nut was hand tightened on. Everything looked fine after I finished sanding and finishing the handle, and I definitely did not over heat the handle by sanding.

So I went back and looked at the knife today, and there are 2 hairline cracks all way down the handle. One on each side.

What the heck happened? Is it still okay to use? I'm thinking I'll just keep it for myself now

It is possible that the cracks occurred earlier. Pressure from tightening and epoxy are only revealed the crack ?

 

[S.Alexander]

The epoxy didn't cause it, or there would be epoxy seeping out of the cracks.
Drilling the handle either caused the cracks, or caused instability in the antler.

I mostly used a broach as the pith was so soft, but maybe there was an existing crack.

What Bill said, plus I bet you used 5 minute epoxy. That stuff gets really hot in curing. That heat probably made the stresses from drilling/grinding cause the cracks.

I used g Flex epoxy, not 5 minute.

S. Alexander, A fellow knife maker gave me some advice for attaching Elk antler to a hidden tang knife. His method was to whittle a piece of wood to roughly fit into a hollowed out Elk antler and cut it off flush and then fill with a slow cure (24hour) epoxy. Then drill and broach out the hole to fit the tang. This reduces the amount of epoxy greatly and expansion and /or shrinkage is minimized. Try that next time. I hope this helps on the next one. Larry

Thanks Larry, I've got another piece of elk that I'll try that on in the future.

 

[S.Alexander]

It is possible that the cracks occurred earlier. Pressure from tightening and epoxy are only revealed the crack ?

No its strange, there were no cracks up until a month later. Well, I wasn't looking at the knife every day during that month, but they definitely weren't there a couple of weeks after the knife was finished.