Adhesives for rubber and silicone

JTknives

JTknives

Blade Heat Treating www.jarodtodd.com
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
8,633
Sorry for starting another post right after my last one but this is a current problem that I'm fighting and need some advise. I get a lot of requests for rubber handles on knives, especial my skinners and fillet knives. But I have yet to find an adhesive that I can trust. The best so far is superglue and I have not had s problem with that up till now. A small kitchen knife I made for my wife out of A2 has started to let go of its rubber scales. This concerns me because the other customers knives are attached the same way. This has got me wanting to move to hidden tangs and stacked rubber with a threaded cap on the end.

Talking to a current customer in Wyoming about his knife I'm working on he wants something softer then the rubber I have. He curently has a rubber handled skinner of mine and loved it. I have a 1/4" thick sheet of orange silicone. He likes the idea of being softer and the orange thing is cool as he will hunt with it. but my question is what do I use to glue all the disks together with. My first thought was duha silicone but I have never worked with it.

So I guess this was a two part question. I would like to stick to full tang knives with rubber or silicone scales but need a top notch adhesive. And second what adhesive to use on silicone in a stacked handle configuration that would not create a hard joint.

Thanks guys.
 
Long term sucess gluing might be tough.
You might look into casting handles onto the blade.
There are 2 part urethane rubber products what I think can cure up to about 80 durometer.
 
Well that would be slick. Even if I just had a square mold I could cast a block around the tang and shape after set up
 
Take a look at barge cement, too. This is what is used to bond shoe rubbers together. Only issue I have seen is when shoes are left in a hot car for many days on end.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
Silicone has been recommended by the makers for a good number of years as an adhesive .I was using it for that some years before they did. Problemis that there are so manytypes of silicone sealers/adhesives so some searching is a good idea to find exactly what you need .It certainly is durable in my experience !
 
Ok I stumbled on a weird adhesive with help from my wife.
Telling here what I wanted to do and how I needed something that stuck to silicone rubber. She then told me that she axadently touched the TV remote with her hand exercise puddy and she could not get it off the buttons. That puddy is just silly puddy in a big tub that comes from the doctor. So what do you know I take a small chunk and touch it to the silicon and wow insta stick. I spread it around and stick another square of silicone on it and wow it's stuck. The more I work it together the thinner the puddy gets and the stronger the bond. At this point it feels like contact cement. I can pull it apart but I think if I could apply just a thin layer by maybe heating it and brushing it on it would or could work amazing. Come to find out silly puddy is silicone based and loves to stick to other silicon. Who would have thought.
 
JTknives said:
Ok I stumbled on a weird adhesive with help from my wife.
Telling here what I wanted to do and how I needed something that stuck to silicone rubber. She then told me that she axadently touched the TV remote with her hand exercise puddy and she could not get it off the buttons. That puddy is just silly puddy in a big tub that comes from the doctor. So what do you know I take a small chunk and touch it to the silicon and wow insta stick. I spread it around and stick another square of silicone on it and wow it's stuck. The more I work it together the thinner the puddy gets and the stronger the bond. At this point it feels like contact cement. I can pull it apart but I think if I could apply just a thin layer by maybe heating it and brushing it on it would or could work amazing. Come to find out silly puddy is silicone based and loves to stick to other silicon. Who would have thought.
Click to expand...
Fun fact, take the putty into a pitch black room and work it in your hands. When the tiny air bubbles "pop" it emits little flashes of light.
kind of like when you bite into a wintergreen lifesaver.
 
Ask the tech service of Loctite Henkel


The engineers will help you


i think they used to have a toughened black superglue, but the tech service will know everything.
 
Last edited:
I had good luck glueing a silicone gasket together with Devcon 12045. Does not stick instantly but remains pliable after it is dry.

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
 
Speaking of casting a handle, I seem to recall that McMaster Carr, for one, carries casting resins... polyurethane at least.

If you were talking hidden tang, I'd say maybe research vulcanizing- perhaps you could get a compound to hot-vulcanize mortised scales together.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top