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- Sep 6, 2014
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- 5,069
I'm working on setting up a test for handle finishes, I'm gonna make a long handle and coat it with different stuff and leave it outside somewhere, probably in wire so mice dont get to it. Anyways I want to try plain leather, Beeswax, Sno Seal, the mixture I made for this, and superglue. Compressed and uncompressed of each. Any other ideas for finishes to test?
I think you might want to also make a mock knife handle that you keep in the house and just wash once or twice a day with soap and water and see what it looks like after a month or so. I'm not sure if leaving it outside is going to be an accurate test of how a knife is normally treated during normal using conditions. Although it may provide information on how it will hold up during extreme conditions. I made knife out of a file with a deer antler handle and a leather sheath years ago for my brother-in-law. Anyhow he dropped it out of his fanny pack during early bow season and left it buried in the wet leaves for two or three weeks and then started feeling bad and finally went back with a metal detector and found it. The sheath was so water logged that it weighed about 3-4 times as much as it normal would, the carbon steel blade was completely rusted into the sheath. I finally got them apart and the sheath dried way too small for the knife ever to fit it again so I cleaned the knife up for him and made him a new sheath. He then let knife sit in his garage and let the mice eat the sheath and part of the handle off the knife. At the time I built that knife I wasn't using snow seal for leather treatment I was using Tandy's Resolene, though I don't snow seal could have saved that sheath. My brother-in-law is also the reason I started putting kydex liners in my sheaths, because he pushed a knife blade through the side of a sheath and almost into his thigh. I did one experiment one time I took a piece leather got warm and soaked it with snow a few times and thew it in my quench bucket for a few days and it didn't soak up any water, it just floated around like a cork.