New guy looking for advice

S

shanesaw

Joined
Feb 10, 2018
Messages
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Hey everyone! New guy here, my name is Shane. I hope I am posting this in the right section.
I bought this Condor knife blank last June. I bought some Walnut, found some material for liners and stainless steel rod for the pins and went to work. I was really happy with how it turned out for my first attempt.

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Fast forward to a month or so ago, and I noticed that the scales had shrunk so much that it's noticable now when holding it. Could this be from the weather here in southern Ontario, Canada? You can see that towards the butt end it even separated enough to allow a piece of paper to slide between the liner and scale. Is the only way to fix this to remove the scales and start again. I am incredibly new to this so all suggestions are welcome.
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It's essentiallye shrunk this much on all edges.
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shrinkage usually means the wood was too wet when it was used. that happened to me long ago, i bought a moisture meter. wood should be 5-8% moisture before it is used.
 
john april said:
shrinkage usually means the wood was too wet when it was used. that happened to me long ago, i bought a moisture meter. wood should be 5-8% moisture before it is used.
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Unfortunately, I didn't think of testing that. Or even considering that as a possible issue. I guess that's the fun in learning.
 
gunfixrjoe said:
I'd guess that your wood might not have been dry. Was it stabilized?
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I bought the wood from a local mill. It was scrap cut from a aproject. I guess I assumed coming from there it was ready to use. I had read about stabalizing, but I didn't attempt to do it myself.
 
Even dry wood will shrink or expand. Optimum moisture is 8% to 9% for maximum stability. If you dry it more then that you start running into other problems. I dry wood for a living for a large lumber mill. But like I said even if you hit these numbers spot on the wood will still move as the weather changes. All wood (excluding some of the exotics) needs to be stabilised befor being used for handle material. What this does is fills the wood with an stabilising liquid that cures and hardenes. This helps prevent moisture from being absorbed or lost.
 
I guess I'll just redo them. I really liked the blank, and it bugs me too much to leave it lol I'll chalk this up as a learning experience. I appreciate the replies so far.
 
Like JT said "even dry wood will shrink or expand"
It will shrink or expand according to the environment it is kept in. Running the heat all winter dries out the air and will cause wood to shrink, by summertime it will swell back. Stabilizing really helps stop most of this movement. If your glue joint has failed and it is that much of a crack between scale and blade it should be replaced, summertime wont fix that.
 
What glue/epoxy did you use? There really is only a handful of adhesives that are good for this type of job. Just because the package says it's for wood, metal, plastic, glass exc does not mean it's good for knives. Stay away from the 5min epoxys like thy have the plague. General rule of thumb is the faster it cures the worse it is. You want a nice 24-36hr cure time.
 
I did my first set of scales on a Helle blank. Unstabilized wood. If I use it in a wet environment things swell and the pins are a bit receded. Long dry, hot summer, pins are a touch exposed. This stops when you use stabilized wood.

I use different epoxies for a variety of things. I have an epoxy that takes about 3-4 hrs to begin to set up that works really well for a lot of things. But when I compare it to gflex epoxy that I use for knife handles it isn't in the same league. I am surprised by how flexible and pliable "grippy" gflex is. I have to work hard to get it off my reusable plastic applicators. Bending them to crack it off doesn't work like it does with other epoxies.
 
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