Tips & tricks: gluing a hidden tang blade.

anvilring

anvilring

Joined
Nov 29, 2000
Messages
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Many of you may know this little trick to getting complete epoxy fill in a brooched handle but for those who don't, it makes simple work of it. I use, for this application, JB Weld's slow cure epoxy.


[video=youtube;BBK9F0LiRUE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBK9F0LiRUE[/video]

edit: I forgot to say that you can use several different size straws for this; some I've found at drinkbars at gas stations are quite thick walled yet 1/2 the diameter of the one in the vid. I have even used the "double barreled" short ones for coffee... ya gotta suck pretty hard for those.
 
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WOW thats somethign I never would have thought of!!!! While watchign I kept getting a mental image of someone sucking jb weld right into their mouth lol.
 
Nice trick, I would have never figured that one out myself.
Thanks for sharing it.
CW
 
Great tip and thanks for taking the time to share.
 
I would say, pretty good idea, but not at all new, except for heating the J&B to thin it. And by having to remove the blade, the fully filling the hole without voids proposition is negated by the suction effect of pulling the tang out. Always mix a bit more than you think you need with any epoxy used in that type of proceedure. With a hidden tang, Acaglas will pour, and if worked in with a wire, will give the same benefit without having to heat it, or suck up harmful vapors. I tried that in the seventies. You cannot avoid the vapors when sucking epoxy through a straw. If it is thin enough to suck through a straw, it is thin enough to pour. Use an epoxy that is pourable, or at least somewhat pourable, and work it in with a thin wire. I will say, that is one "hellava" fine looking knife he is making. BUT, if he is locking the tang with a cross pin, it hardly matters which type of epoxy is being used. Whatever epoxy is used, it is a sealed filler, and will be there pretty much forever. That is my opinion based on 40 years of knifemaking. Take it or leave it. Many early knives with hidden tangs were set with "cutlers rezin", and are still together without even a cross pin. Cutlers rezin is simply pine sap mixed with beeswax and ash, or brick dust, or sawdust. It was poured hot into the hole, then the tang was heated and shoved in. To each his own, but I will not be sucking epoxy through a straw. If it can't be pored, it won't be used by me on knife work.
 
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