How grippy is kirinite?

Surfingringo

Surfingringo

Joined
May 25, 2013
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I am curious because I am considering putting a new handle on one of my fish cleaning knives. I have been testing handle materials to see what maintains the best grip when wet and bloody at the cleaning table. Wood and polished G10 are at the bottom of the list...both of those get VERY slick when covered in fish goo. Peel ply g10 does a fair bit better but even it gets pretty slick when the divots all get full of blood. Spyderco's textured frn outperforms all of the aforementioned.

Most of the above results were what I had come to expect after using all of those materials but what surprised me a bit was stone washed ti. I have a Spydiechef folder in lc200n (I modified the blade shape) that I have been using for fishing on my kayak. Surprisingly, the ti handle maintains far more "grippiness" than wood and polished g10 when wet and bloody. It actually holds its on with peel ply g10 when both are fully covered/filled with blood and fish goo. This has made me realize that the materials that feel the most grippy when dry are not always the ones that actually perform that way when wet or slick.

So this brings me to kirinite. I am curious because I remember hearing a while back that the more you polished this material the better it would bond to the hand/skin. Whether or not this is true or would apply when wet/bloody I don't know. Anyone have extensive experience using this material for knife handles? I'd love to hear about it.
 
Well, the polished kirinite scale I had for one of my ZTs was the most slippery material have ever used. If looking for polished qnd grippy material, would avoid. Maybe there's different variations of it though, not sure. Colors show up very "jazzy" and bright though with kirinite, which is neat, c-tek may be a bit more grippy and still have same look.
 
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I have a big Chris that is surprisingly grippy kirinite. That being said, I wouldn't have it on my hunting or bait cutting and fillet knives. I would go for horse stall mats, cheap, easy to form and grippy. Have it on 2 kitchen knives, it works great.

Russ
 
I gotta agree with Ulf and mycough. I had it on a small custom fixed blade once and it was definitely not in the same category as micarta or a sand blasted Ti finish. It's striking to look at but my knife, at least, wasn't what I'd call a "dirty" user.

The FRN you mentioned, or a matte finished micarta, have always worked well for me when dirty. My dirt was warehouse stuff... water, solvent, oil or grease, but not natural goo from hunting or fishing.
 
You should try heavily bead blasted micarta. This is the most grippy when wet material that I have found. It looks rather boring but it's performance in the field is unmatched.

If your close to North West Arkansas I'll let you borrow one of the knives I've made with such a handle treatment. It's pretty remarkable in the field. It retains a warm to the touch feeling in winter time and the surface feels almost like a stippled grip on a gun. When the handles get wet the exposed cotton fibers on the very surface open up some and your traction/purchase on the handle actually slightly improves.

The only downside to it as a handle material that I have found is that micarta is pretty bland in visual appeal and when bead blasting it makes the color saturation of that material look fairly washed out. The knife below is in black micarta and if polished it would be jet black in color but as shown it looks more like a medium grey. I think the black and tan micarta responds best to this surface treatment because washed out black goes grey and washed out tan goes to a light tan but most of the other colors I've seen with this surface finish on micarta start to look like an old faded t-shirt right out of the shop rather than a nice new knife.

Here is one of the latest that I did with bead blasted micarta on a big 12" chopper in CPM 3V that I made for brushing in blinds when hunting and performing as a heavy duty camp knife.

IMG_5238_zps2jyswrhr.jpg

IMG_5272_zpsjdhuzila.jpg


As a side note, heavily bead blasted G10 has a somewhat similar texture but G10 doesn't feel warm to the touch in winter and in my experience it has equal wet/dry traction in your palm whereas micarta seems to have slightly improved traction when wet. G10 however, does not seem to look like the color saturation is washed out when bead blasted like micarta does. If you wanted a brightly colored handle like hunter orange or royal blue, then blasted G10 may be a good secondary choice that is still very functional in the field. If you want the best function you can get, then blasted micarta is the way to go and to my eyes the black or tan seems to look the best with that given surface treatment.
 
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First off handle shape is going to come into play on any material. That being said. I have a ESEE 4 with stock linen Micarta. Very smooth when dry. Soon as it gets moist its starts getting grippy. The wetter the better. You might want to try a matte finish on it. Have not tried it on in micarta but I had Bark River do it for me on G10 and it helped a lot. BR also offer's it on micarta. Might want to look at the canvas micarta to.

I addition. any material that is sealed or a solid compound like FRN per-say will most likey get slippery when wet. The Linen Micarta is layered and soakes in the moisture when wet. You can see it. The color changes.

Hope this helps.


rustyspike
 
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gdpolk said:
You should try heavily bead blasted micarta. This is the most grippy when wet material that I have found. It looks rather boring but it's performance in the field is unmatched.

If your close to North West Arkansas I'll let you borrow one of the knives I've made with such a handle treatment. It's pretty remarkable in the field. It retains a warm to the touch feeling in winter time and the surface feels almost like a stippled grip on a gun. When the handles get wet the exposed cotton fibers on the very surface open up some and your traction/purchase on the handle actually slightly improves.

The only downside to it as a handle material that I have found is that micarta is pretty bland in visual appeal and when bead blasting it makes the color saturation of that material look fairly washed out. The knife below is in black micarta and if polished it would be jet black in color but as shown it looks more like a medium grey. I think the black and tan micarta responds best to this surface treatment because washed out black goes grey and washed out tan goes to a light tan but most of the other colors I've seen with this surface finish on micarta start to look like an old faded t-shirt right out of the shop rather than a nice new knife.

Here is one of the latest that I did with bead blasted micarta on a big 12" chopper in CPM 3V that I made for brushing in blinds when hunting and performing as a heavy duty camp knife.

IMG_5238_zps2jyswrhr.jpg

IMG_5272_zpsjdhuzila.jpg


As a side note, heavily bead blasted G10 has a somewhat similar texture but G10 doesn't feel warm to the touch in winter and in my experience it has equal wet/dry traction in your palm whereas micarta seems to have slightly improved traction when wet. G10 however, does not seem to look like the color saturation is washed out when bead blasted like micarta does. If you wanted a brightly colored handle like hunter orange or royal blue, then blasted G10 may be a good secondary choice that is still very functional in the field. If you want the best function you can get, then blasted micarta is the way to go and to my eyes the black or tan seems to look the best with that given surface treatment.
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Great looking chopper gd!!
Joe
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. The bead blasted Micarta sounds like it might be worth trying. Gdpolk, how would you rate it compared to peel ply G10 for traction when wet/slick?
 
The phenolic resin/cotton canvas of Survive!Knives works well when wet.
One thing that you can do is to hold the knife with only one hand and not get that knife or hand wet with blood. Works for fishor deer .
 
Have you ever tried that tool dip rubber stuff you can get at ACE and other hardware stores?
 
Just remember there's micarta and then there's micarta. The phenolic resin may be similar but the lamination material could be anything from paper, to linen, to canvas, to even thin layers of wood. When wet, it is probably the canvas micarta variant that affords the best grip due to the abundant fibers that are raised due to exposure to moisture (think how wood workers will slightly dampen a wooden surface to raise errant fibers prior to finish sanding).
 
I had kirinite handles on a 1911, slickest material Iv ever had for a grip. I would get canvas/burlap micarta no question.
 
mete said:
One thing that you can do is to hold the knife with only one hand and not get that knife or hand wet with blood. Works for fishor deer .
Click to expand...

This! I was taught this concept at an early age... works with paint brushes too :)
 
Ebbtide said:
This! I was taught this concept at an early age... works with paint brushes too :)
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Either you boys are much more fastidious than I am or you don't have a big enough stack of fish on the cleaning table. ;) I dunno, could be the former, but I've cleaned a few and I've never finished with a clean/dry right hand.
 
That EDC forums Glow in the Dark Manix 2XL was kirinite it has a weird smooth feel; almost like polished stone.
 
I've got a kirinite and g10 scale on my ZT0550 made by suingab or g10it. The kirinite is polished and smooth, the g10 is more matte. The whole scale is rather grippy dry, not as much when wet but I wouldn't call it slippery. Gloved hand in snow, very slippery but the only way to get traction in that situation is heavy texturing. Check out the maker I mentioned above, he can do some pretty elaborate designs so you could get a grippy design in the kirinite or texturing added where you want it. His prices and wait times are low.
 
I have a Krinnite custom in 4V. It was so slippery I had to sand it to a lower finish. It still is no where asgood as any of the common materials in use like micarta, G10, Carbon fiber, FRN, Delrin, etc. It was much like a smooth stainless handle in that without modification I didn't feel safe with it. Smooth Titanium poses no problems for me. I do like the way I don't have to worry about caring for it but there are several other materials that share that yet are better grip wise.

Joe
 
Surfingringo said:
Thanks for the feedback guys. The bead blasted Micarta sounds like it might be worth trying. Gdpolk, how would you rate it compared to peel ply G10 for traction when wet/slick?
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Honestly, I don't know. I've never worked with peel away G10 because I figured that either way I'd have to use tooling to contour the handle shapes regardless of peel and ply technology or not but the thought of a handle material that can be plucked apart by hand just didn't seem nearly as stable or durable over time. These are just off the cuff assumptions about it having never actually used it. The peel and ply stuff may be fantastic, but I've just never been encouraged to go that route on any of my knives.
 
Not grippy at all, almost feel like stone or hard plastic.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 
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