Stacked handle leather?

ron_m80

ron_m80

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Mar 1, 2009
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Does anyone have a source for the hard core die hard shoe leather that KA-Bar uses on knife handles?

Any techniques or tips are welcome as well, thank you.
 
Most knife supply catalogs sells the cut out leather disks by the dozen. I also used to buy them in bags of 100.

Use slow cure epoxy, and glue up while stacking on the tang ( wear rubber gloves). Clamp the pommel on snug, and wipe off any excess resin. Sand the leather and pommel to shape. Treat with edge dressing and buff with carnuba or other hard wax.

If you plan on doing this more than once, here is a great trick:
I have a mandrel made from a bolt that I use to stack and glue the disks on. The bolt is a 6" long, 1/2" bolt that I ground flat to 1/4" thick. With two washers an a 1/2" nut, it makes a great leather handle assembly tool. I use it to assemble elephant hide and birch bark handles. (Which reminds me that I need to make some more. I may try and shoot a tutorial.) This allows glue up and rough shaping off the knife.... which is a lot neater. Coat the bolt with wax to prevent it from being epoxied to the leather handle. After pre-shaping the handle ( and grinding off all the excess dried epoxy), epoxy the handle on the knife tang, with the pommel clamping it firm. Then do the final shaping and buffing.
 
Thank you.

The links helped quite a bit too. I found a few other things I had been trying to source today.
 
this tutorial helped me a lot:

https://www.brisa.fi/portal/index.p...ask=view&id=20&Itemid=15&limit=1&limitstart=0

Also make sure to make a few test stacks of leather to test your finish on. You will not know how it will look till you try it and then you will be stuck with a finish you do not like. I find that leather handles take a lot of time to finish properly, but give one of the best user grips there is.

My favorite after quite a few knives is just layer upon layer of the Gold quality leather grease they sell bettween alternating sanding grits all the way up to 2000. (the same as covered in the link but skipping the Gum) I have not found a grease similar from any local leather supplier the gives close to the same finish.

I made quite few of these before I had access to power tools and now miss making them :)
 
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A local shoe repair shop might have cut off bits from leather soles.
You'd be surprised what gets thrown away
 
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