To pin or not to pin?

Decisions, decisions. Your knife is beautiful as it is, but, if it ends up as a using knife, other than fighting, if the glue fails you have nothing there to keep it from coming apart. I'd pin it, maybe a hidden pin :jerkit:
 
A bad thing happend to me and I was glad I caught it when I did. I was about to put it on the table and something told me to look a closer look at it the epoxy didnt set at all!!!!! So It is now getting cleaned and ready for another shot with some new epoxy I got from Pop's at the show. Glad I did see it when I did!
 
I'm of two minds about the pin, but one mind that that's a very nice fighter.

On one hand, with a good quality epoxy and proper construction and solid handle material there is no real nead for epoxy and a pin allows anouther avenue for moister to enter. Also with natural materials that shrink and expand ever so slightly a pin often doesn't stay perfectly flush.

On the other hand I'm a pretty big believer in mechanicly locking the handle to the tange. With the ones I do without pins I make notches in the tange and in the handle so that even if the epoxy turned loose the handle would be locked on and would not come off. I've had to tear a couple off and wound up grinding the handle and epoxy off.

Most of the time I use pins I've drill everything before shaping to help hold everything together.
 
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