Using Poly Pearl

M

me2

Joined
Oct 11, 2003
Messages
5,106
My wife got some poly pearl from Texas Knifemakers Supply for me for Christmas. Does anyone have any experience working with it? It looks great on the finished side, sort of a depth effect when looking into it.
 
I have used it many times mostly on wedding knives. Just dont get it too hot when grinding, shaping and buffing. It tends to discolor and melt. Just sand it down progressively to about 1000 grit and buff carefully with scatchless pink or white rouge and it will look really deep. Beautiful stuff really, I think people would use it more if it cost more.
 
I like how is looks too, but I thought it was a little on the brittle side. Except like Bruce said, if you get it too hot, it gets gummy.
 
I dont know how the factory cuts it, but there are little chips all around the edges. How hard is it to cut with hand saws? I hope its not anything like Plexiglass.
 
Ive never had trouble cutting it with a bandsaw. The chips around the edges are small but be sure to cut the profile oversized and grind down to the finished size. You wont have any trouble, really.
 
It makes great collectible/presentation knives.It is brittle, but with care holds up OK. It does not take heavy wear well.The Abalone and Feathered Macaw look great.Grind slow with sharp belts. Sand to very smooth.Buff with fine white rough (or pink).Hand polishing with plastic/Plexiglas polish works good ,too.
 
I have worked with white, red, blue, and black. The only problem that I have found is tiny bubbles in the "good" surface of the white which hold buffing compound. The fix is simple, flatten the "good" side and put it against the tang and finish the rough side. Doesn't make any difference to appearance except that there are fewer tiny bubbles on the rough side to catch compound. If you find the tiny bubbles just sand them out by hand and rebuff.

The darker shades hide the tiny dark spots of compound better.
 
For a quick try, I've got a kiridashi that I could finish pretty quick and try the handles on. Does it need to be wet sanded to avoid dust, like Plexiglass?
 
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