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JK, I've been enjoying your YouTube content, thanks for putting it out there.
First Attempt at Bolsters on a Full Tang Knife
- Thread starter J. Keeton
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- Jun 3, 2019
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this is not the best place for this post ... but this thread existed, and this is fairly relevant, so.... (THIS IS ABOUT EPOXY AND BOLSTERS WITHOUT PINS)
Quite a while ago I posted some photos of some small "dinner" knives I made for my wife - who has small hands, and had taken to using a cheap butter knife to cut her food. So I decided to make these for her, as an experiment, hopefully to be replicated at a later time in higher quality handle material and damascus:
One of these was an experiment in soldering a bolster in place. Turned out "ok" ... but definitely had its limitations and defects. she uses these every day ... but along the way, one of these knives (not the one with the bolster) got left in the sink overnight, and was toast. I decided to re-handle it using a different approach to attaching the bolster. For now I did not really have enough space to drill out holes for pins for the bolster .... so I decided to just go ahead an try securing a bolster with epoxy only. I figured, give a little time and use and see if this approach held up.....
Well, yesterday, I was putting the finishing touches on the handle (stabilized maple)/bolster finish:
..... and something seemed a little amiss: an offset at the junction of the scale/bolster that was not there before ... and something of a visible line between the bolster and the tang that was not there before. A little probing with a fingernail produced this:
Ah well .... I guess I did not need to wait for some time of usage to see if just the epoxy would hold... :-(
It is possible that I overheated the epoxy while heating ... but I am aware of that risk, and tried to not let it get overly warm.
Maybe someone else has tried this with similar (or different?) results, but I could not find it on search. So if someone is thinking of trying this ..... here is at least one example
(I hate to waste the nice handle material: the junction between bolster/handle/tang is actually quite tight - so I think I clean the junctions and re-glue and see if it lasts...... these do not exactly experience a high-stress usage environment......)
Quite a while ago I posted some photos of some small "dinner" knives I made for my wife - who has small hands, and had taken to using a cheap butter knife to cut her food. So I decided to make these for her, as an experiment, hopefully to be replicated at a later time in higher quality handle material and damascus:
One of these was an experiment in soldering a bolster in place. Turned out "ok" ... but definitely had its limitations and defects. she uses these every day ... but along the way, one of these knives (not the one with the bolster) got left in the sink overnight, and was toast. I decided to re-handle it using a different approach to attaching the bolster. For now I did not really have enough space to drill out holes for pins for the bolster .... so I decided to just go ahead an try securing a bolster with epoxy only. I figured, give a little time and use and see if this approach held up.....
Well, yesterday, I was putting the finishing touches on the handle (stabilized maple)/bolster finish:
..... and something seemed a little amiss: an offset at the junction of the scale/bolster that was not there before ... and something of a visible line between the bolster and the tang that was not there before. A little probing with a fingernail produced this:
Ah well .... I guess I did not need to wait for some time of usage to see if just the epoxy would hold... :-(
It is possible that I overheated the epoxy while heating ... but I am aware of that risk, and tried to not let it get overly warm.
Maybe someone else has tried this with similar (or different?) results, but I could not find it on search. So if someone is thinking of trying this ..... here is at least one example
(I hate to waste the nice handle material: the junction between bolster/handle/tang is actually quite tight - so I think I clean the junctions and re-glue and see if it lasts...... these do not exactly experience a high-stress usage environment......)