Stacked leather handle with silver inlay, anyone have ideas or experience with this?

J

Jacky Boy

Joined
Oct 31, 2011
Messages
1
Hi,

I have an idea for a christmas gift I'd like to build. Basically a scaled down fairbairn-sykes knife (thinking 8-9 inches total length), with an upside down heart-shaped pommel (for my old lady).

I'm picturing a stacked leather handle with some kind of design made from silver embedded in it. Something I might be able to fashion from something like this:

http://www.workingsilver.com/produc...d=242&osCsid=36a9ec2a8a4d25f464dea6e4f8449d04

and then embedd it around the handle.

I'm thinking some kind of creeping ivy (similar to file work on the spine of a blade), or maybe spiders web...

My questions have to do with the best method of attaching this material to the stacked leather in a way that is secure and best highlights its beauty. It would be best, I think, to have the silver's surface exposed on the handle so that one can feel it when handling the knife.

Will there be any negative reactivity with the epoxy? Should I rely on the epoxy itself to hold the silver in, or should i fashion it in such a manner that there are pieces of the silver (flanges?) that penetrate deeper into the handle in order to provide a more secure hold?

If anyone has experience with this sort of thing, links to tutorials, or any suggestions, I'd love to hear from you!
 
It is not a good idea or likely to work. Silver wire inlay is done with thin ribbon wire that is inserted into thin slits cut into the wooden handle. Leather isn't a good candidate for such inlay.
Either change the handle to wood and learn inlay technique, or stick with leather washers and perhaps place silver sheets every second or third leather piece. This will make thin silver lines in the handle.
 
You might try slicing micarta and using it like stacked leather, then you would have a solid handle to attach your silver work to.
 
Short of having superb inlay skills, it will be hard to inlay silver into Micarta.

I have a much better idea that is pretty simple, and make a stunning handle with a sort of Celtic Knotwork look to the silver. It will look like you inlaid it, too.

Goggle woodworking tutorials on doing a Celtic Knot turning. There are hundreds of them...here is one:
http://www.woodworkforums.com/f207/making-celtic-knot-tutorial-ed-blysard-100051/

Use a suitable wood or Micarta for the main stock, and silver sheet for the inlay pieces. This will require some skills to do, because the silver/Micarta joint will fail easily in shaping if overheated any at all. I would run a bolt down the assembly, and snug it tight when shaping to keep everything together. Once pre-shaped, install the handle on the knife and tighten the pommel down while the epoxy is drying. That should allow the final sanding and shaping with fewer problems. If you use a silver looking wood, or wood turning acrylic material, it will make this project much easier than metal.

For those who haven't done it, a Celtic Knot inlay makes a great handle for a Sgian Dubh or other small knife when done in ebony/blackwood and maple for the stripes. It looks very complex when done, but is really simple to do. There have been some threads on BF in the past about this procedure. You can glue it up with a cap and bolster of the same maple as the stripes, and it just says, "WOW". Give one a try...you will like it. The trick is to center drill the ends of the wood block and make a simple jig to hold it in alignment while gluing in the segments. A four-fold knot is the simplest, as indexing a square piece of wood for 90 degrees is not rocket science. I have this handle in the Book Project .

I did one where I made some cutting errors and the loops were not even. To make lemonade from lemons, I took the turning and drilled holes (twice the width of the stripe) on the loop stripes in various places. I glued in pieces of black doweling in the holes, and when sanded flush, the loops looked like an atom with electrons swirling around.
 
The start of that project gives no clue the finished product. From square to graceful curves. The band saw jigs are of particular interest to me. It's on my to do list.
Thanks
 
Thats a really interesting technique Stacy, thanks. I´ll have to give that a shot at some point.

Brian
 
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