Rate these handle materials. . .

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faxanadu

Joined
Apr 13, 2002
Messages
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How do the following commonly used handle materials stack up in terms of pure strength? (In the sense of withstanding great stress without bending/breaking)

g-10
zytel
t6 aluminum
carbon fiber
stainless steel
titanium

I think that steel and titanium would certainly be on top, but I'd like some input from those who are more knowledgable.

Thanks!
 
To make this more clear you would probably want to take away either breaking or bending, some materials like Zytel would be the first to bend but one of the last to break IMO.

In overall strength I would list them as follows:

Titanium
Carbon Fiber
Stainless Steel
G-10
T-6 Aluminum (Hardened)
Micarta
Zytel

The thing you also need to keep in mind is that usually the man made materials are backed up with Stainless or Titanium liners for added durability.
 
Stainless steel
Titanium
Micarta
Carbon fiber
T6
G10 - Zytel - not sure about them
 
faxanadu,

You have to be more specific.

Do you want to know which material is strongest by weight? Are you comparing equal sized pieces? Please provide more data.

The answers will be different based on the question.
 
I see how's there's different standards for judging this, so I'll try to be more specific. I'm assuming they're equal-sized pieces (dimensionally), not taking weight into account. To give you the best sense of what I mean by "strength" let's say you're stabbing full force into a tree. With all else being equal, which materials would be less likely to result in catastrophic failure?

I know that steel and titanium are by far the strongest (in terms of volume) so I'll take those out of the equation. I'm primarily concerned with the synthetics and aluminum.

Thanks for the input!
 
In a strength to weight ratio Carbon Fiber rivals even Titanium, in some applications it may surpass it.

I'm really unclear on how you want to apply this information, for knife handle material?

There are so many grades of stainless, aluminum and Titanium that it's hard to put them in order as well.

Then you need to decide if the Steel, Aluminum or Titanium is heat treated...

There are even different grades of Micarta (rag, linen, paper..), same with Carbon Fiber...

So, let's say you're making a 4" folder, you want to make scales but are not sure what to use, none of the metal is heat treated, it's a lock back so there are no liners, your Micarta option is Linen, and your Carbon Fiber is the standard type available to knife makers (not the salvaged jet wings that are floating around). And since this is to be a somewhat thin folder, all stock should be 1/8" thick.

Here would be my list in order of preference:

Titanium/Carbon Fiber (a toss up, slight edge to titanium)
G-10
Stainless
Micarta
Aluminum
FRM/Zytel
 
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