Texturing Micarta Grips (DIY)

David From NC

David From NC

Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
445
Can anyone give me some tips or tricks on adding grooves or texture cuts to a micarta handled knife?

I'm looking at going to the ESEE line but the slab feel of the handles turn me off.

Merely sanding them and roughing them won't change my issue with them. I have seen several on this site with some serious homemade texturing, using vertical cut lines or grooves, and some with wider rounded cuts resembling TOPS "rocky mountain tread" type texturing.

I have a standard Dremel, but my limited skills might not pull it off without some serious help! Diagrams and videos are best, but any tips or tricks are appreciated.
 
You can file grooves in them, or if you have an electric engraving pencil, you can put a rough texture on them easily.
 
Bill is the man. You just need to remove material to make it more suitable to your tastes. Go wild!
 
By all means, grind away; please do remember that you are grinding on what amounts to fiberglass...wear a mask! Do as much as you can not to breathe any of the dust from grinding. Most people who don't wear a mask when grinding would not believe how much dust they breathe in. (Try it once with something less damaging then blow your nose, you will be shocked).
 
Micarta dust is not good to breathe, but it is phenolic resin and canvas, linen, or paper.
G10 is fiberglass, and will do serious lung damage.
 
If you look over on the ESEE forum you will see many examples of people who have done the same thing. I have seen three main themes:

  • Evenly spaces grooves made with the round file at the corners only.
  • Evenly spaces grooves that go all the way across the scale.
  • A more random approach of overlapping grooves that oppose one another front to back that give what I would call sort of "knapped flint" kind of look.

I have also seen a couple where people drilled little divots all over the place and did not care for those...marco stippling sort of thing.

I have a 5 and I will probably do either the first or the third. I plan on creating some bogus scales fully sized and shaped out of wood and practice first so I don't mess up a set of $50 micarta scales.

Don't sweat the ESEE scale thing. Those knives are meant to be used and a lot of people play around with the scales, strip the blades, reprofile, convex...etc. They are great knives right from the factory and they are great knives to mess with. I have reprofiled one and again, plan to fix up the scales.

Good luck.
 
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