I don’t think it’s shredding so much as phenolic resin is more abrasion resistant, both products use a cloth material to form the layers so both would be liable to shred without the resins to hold them in place, polyester or fiberglass resin is harder but can also be more brittle, the fiberglass cloth helps strengthen it and reduce chipping or breaking while the phenolic resin in micarta is softer making it tougher in the sense of it’s harder to break and wears better, if you made some homemade micarta with polyester resin it would behave much more like g10, with resins harder doesn’t always equal better. It’s like if you took a piece of glass and a piece of rubber mat and scored the material with a knife, the glass would very clearly scratch and create a weak point that it could then easily break, the rubber mat would not cut well because the material gives more, you would need to apply a lot more pressure to make a noticeable cut.
In my experience normal epoxy resin and polyester resin feel about the same, phenolic resin is completely different and isn’t really available to most consumers, That’s why you can’t make actual micarta at home is that unless you know someone who works in a commercial factory that can get phenolic resin you can’t really duplicate it. In my opinion I haven’t really noticed any difficulties in the cloth material sanding, when you made micarta at home did you use a press or just a clamp? I think that could have an effect I don’t think a clamp is enough, I think you need a very large press to get enough force to compact the cloth. All I know is I’ve worked with a lot of resins and can definitely tell the difference in how some of them sand. I still think that’s the biggest difference in how professionally made micarta or g10 works is the type of resin, with the exception that the glass in the g-10 kills wood blades
I have used only once G10 , orange one .I buy it from knife store ......That thing have very little glass fiber inside . That why it is easy to grind. I have REAL industrial composite /G-10/ with fiberglass......It is more heavy and that thing will dull dril bits one first hole .
I like that lanyard solution, nice work. Orange g10 is one of my favourites.I bought mine from a respectable store in Germany....but who knows
That’s almost identical to my experience with G10. I tried cutting some relatively thin textured G10 with a jig saw and ruined two blades before getting both scales cut out.
Which grit belt and speed you use ? I have one 40 grit zirconia belt which I use only on micarta and wood .I never notice any problem with micarta ....with around 10 m/s belt speed .
