Wood swap, file work, glue.

[Colin Nicol]

I have a few simple questions. I have recently made a few tapered tang drop point skinners swith fie work on the back (from a CKD tutorial) The problem is when I fix the slabs to the tang all the file work gets filled with glue. I would prefer it if this did not happen. Any ideas?
If any of you out there would like to swap some slabs of wood or other material I would be interested. New Zealand has some beautiful woods ranging from the incredibly hard to soft and beautiful. If you contact me and let me know what it is for and the colours and sizes I'll send you some wood. If you could send me stuff like micarta (impossible to find here) or wood fron your area that would be great.
I also have a few bits of antler, mainly red.

Colin

 

[L6steel]

Colin, I've had the same problem and I've always just went back over the file work with a scribe and dug the epoxy out. It's a p.i.b. but nothing to do about it.
I heard once that you can coat the edge of the tang with vaseline and then carefully clean the flats and that will keep the epoxy from sticking in the file worked area but I never tried it. Just seems like it would be too hard to keep the stuff off the area where you need the glue to be. I'd rather have to spend a little more time and tedium cleaning the glue out and know I've got a good solid handle than take a short cut and not know.

 

[jhiggins]

This is how I do it, might work for you:

I use a nice, high-quality masking tape. Get 3M brand - I like the qualities the tape has. It's not too sticky. More importantly its not too thick. Reason why I like it to be thin is because of how I apply it. What I do is put the tape over the filework and press it in real good with my thumb. Then I use a wooden popsicle stick (I buy bags of them for mixing epoxy) and push the tape into all the crevices. Sometimes I'll shave some off the stick to get right into the crevices nice and tight.

When I am confident the tape completely covers the filework, then I shave the excess tape off the flats with a sharp new single-sided razor-blade. After applying the scales, and the glue-up goes well, I use a scribe or big needle to pick out the tape and the epoxy. With a little patience, I can usually start at one end and pick it all out with minimal cleanup afterwards.

The tape keeps the epoxy off the filework and there's no fuss with the finish of it after the epoxy is picked out. Once in a while I'll have to use an xacto knife to scrap some off the scale inside of where I might have a particulariy deep file groove, but usually everything just pops right out with the tape.

 

[george tichbourne]

The tedious way is to shape and finish the handle scales exactly to the tang, dry fit everything, give the filework, and scale edges a good coat of carnuba wax. Dissassemble and glue scales in place with epoxy. Wait patiently until epoxy begins to set up (hard tacky stage) peel the excess epoxy off with a dental pick or a small pointy object, wash any excess epoxy off with laquer thinners and let the knife sit until the epoxy is fully cured then refinish the scales because the laquer thinner will have messed up the finish.

But it works.