Q&A thread

koyote

koyote

Joined
Mar 29, 2007
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There's a lot that I get asked about that I really should get up on the website, and this looks like a good place to suss is all out.



One thing that has come up a bit recently is about wood care.

I mostly stick to oilier and stable woods in knife handles- lignum vitae, ipe, osage orange, cocobolo, bocote, and such. Even with these, I will oil and finish them,

I also work with some woods like jatoba, maple, walnut, acacia, and so on that really benefit from a deep oil soak.

Generally speaking, any wood I use for a handle has sat around for at least 6 months - and often over a year- and has gotten nice and dry (even though they start out dried for at least that long when I get them). So I've usually covered some of the shrinkage potential that way.

Oils and waxes are really for two purposes here- to prevent shrinkage and cracking by filling the voids/pores/spaces/whatever and sealing the wood against the environment.

You can get a really good, impermiable, glassy seal with a polyurethane or other quick drying coats, but there are a lot of trade offs to the fast approach.

I prefer to use boiled linseed oil, tung oil, and briwax. The oils penetrate deeply and are good to go even after you get scratches and dents in the handle. All of them can be reapplied easily by the owner and that makes long term maintenance nice and easy/

The linseed oil seems to be the best for really soaking in, especially if you have a couple gallons in a bucket and just dunk the completed blade in and let it soak overnight. then you have to hang it up to dry, wipe off the excess after a couple hours and leave it in the rafters for a week. Linseed oil does darken most woods a bit, and has the longest cure time.

Tung oil keeps lighter woods lighter, penetreates well, and goes a bit faster. The best way to do a full run with tung oil is to soak the handle for a bit, then hang it up to dry for about 5-10 minutes. Then buff with a lint free cloth until you've got as much of the 'tackiness' off as you can. Let dry overnight, then use a green scrubby on it and repeat two more times. Very solid.

Briwax is a great finish, works well for maintaining knife handles, and can be used to protect blades, too! Just follow instruction for the most part.
 
there's a couple answers to that- a veg tan leather is naturally reasonably stiuff, and when waterformed will take a good set. The mink oil on that is a protectant and all, but not really a hardener.

Some sheaths have been soaked in melted waxes and that DOES harden the leather up but good. And it's a great answer for some environments, but I find it tends to soften a touch in the desert or around here at 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
 
if you have a wood (or whatever) core, there's no reason not to use a lighter leather for a wrapping. I've gto some puukkos in the collection that are finished with 2-3 ounce leather, and some that look closer to 5.
 
When using the Tung oil why do you *buff most of the tackiness* ?

Ive recently started to use Tung oil and trying to learn about it,s use.
 
there's a bunch of different ways to use it. *most* of the time on close grained woods following the directions does a fair job- brush on, wait 2-5 minutes (depending on temp) and buff off with a cloth, then reapply a day later and let dry overnight before buffing.

My main modification to that is: soak, saturate, brush it in, thick. leave it until not tacky, sand smooth and make sure everything on the handle and tang is dialed in, then reapply and wipe off after a couple minutes, apply once again and let dry completely, then buff (buffing wheel, steel wool, sometimes just a piece of leather and a half hour of time. occasionally even a brass rubbing rod)
 
Ive been soaking them, then letting them dry,light sanding with 1500 grit or scotchbrite pad then soaking again,repeating the process until i get the desired color. I haven,t tried brushing or wiping the excess off.

I need to try that and see how it works. Ive been happy with the results i,m getting but i,m always up for improvement.

Thanks for the info ! Bryce
 
If I want a bit darker, I use linseed oil. soak for a few hours and then wipe off excess, dry for a week. :)
 
wulfshrunting said:
Christof,

Do you peen your pins and tubes?
Click to expand...

That.... depends. I don't do it often with epoxy glue ups, but often have really tight pin fits on those. On handles where I use gorilla glue I do often peen.

Epoxy requires a glue line- if you squeeze too tight you lose strength, so the clamping pressure has to be moderated. Can't hammer on pins! I might still get away with it using really well trimmed pins and completely finished handles before glue up.

Gorilla glue, believe it or not, outperformed many of the glues in the Glue Wars. Done right, it is fantastic stuff- and it requires the tightest possible fit. SO on a handle done that way I will often use temporary pins for the gluing and then put in pins and lanyard hole after and peen them- then do the finish work on the handle sanding.
 
Ever use gorilla glue on a stich tang knife? I have been talking to another knifemaker that does stick tangs, and he favors gorilla glue, but alot of people seem to prefer epoxy.
 
For the knives that have forge finish/patina/bluing/etc, how do you keep the finish on the tang from being sanded away when you're finishing out the handle scales?
 
wulfshrunting said:
For the knives that have forge finish/patina/bluing/etc, how do you keep the finish on the tang from being sanded away when you're finishing out the handle scales?
Click to expand...

Oh! I know the answer to this one! He doesn't worry about it at all. When the handle is all finished and smooth, he blues the tang to make it match the rest of the knife.
 
When I started out I had to grind the tang and the scales at the same time to get the kind of fit to the hand I needed- the right overall handle shape. Nowdays I can eyeball it really well and have the final shape +/- 1/32 inch in heat treating. I still tend to finish the tnag with the scales on because I don't actually see any innate value to having a squared up tang - especially on a large knife with a .20 or even .25 tang. the handle needs to flow the way it needs to flow.

I've done a few complete finishes before glue up and .. eh. doesn't seem to me, for the forge finish effect, to save any work or add anything.
 
Can we get this thread going again? So to refresh an ipe handle, I need to soak overnight, hang for a little bit, dry off excess and let dry anywhere? Cold garage? dry house? does it matter?

What is your rec for bone handles, specifically ivory? Thanks.
 
Ipe is a strange wood in some ways- it's ridiculously durable, but isn't as oily as something like cocobolo. If you try to oil cocobolo you can see what happens as the oil just doesn't soak in. Ipe is an oilly wood, but not so oily that it can't take a good linseed soak or tung oil application- which also makes it easier to get to stick to epoxy.

So, ipe, for all it's hardness and lack of brittleness (it's a good composite bow wood) can benefit from a bit of oiling- especially the end grains. I generally soak in linseed oil for a while and then hang to drip out for about 10 minutes. Then I wipe the blade area really well and the handle lightly (you can even skip wiping the handle) and let it dry out really well. Generally indoors or ont he porch in summer weather.

Briwax is also possible to use, and works well done over well dried linseed or tung oil.

For tung oil you want to paint it on, wait 5 minutes, wipe off with a lint free rag. Then give it a full 24 hour cure and reapply. after the second 24 hour cure, you can generally (unless it's REALLY cold and needs more time) buff it out with a cloth.


Ivory and bone get mineral oil- the more the better, especially at first. I soak a knife I'm sending for a final 2 days before I mail it, but it's a non drying oil....
 
I once read somewhere about the way to treat and maintain wood with linseed oil in coats. On a new handle, it was a coat a day for a week, a coat a week for a month, a coat a month for a year and a coat a year for life. I imagine that soaking it for a day would probably jump you up to the once a year area. Wipe it on thick and let it sit for 15 min, then wipe off the excess. As always, be careful how you dispose of the rags so as to avoid spontaneous combustion.
 
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