Kitchen knife frame handle questions

[Hubert S.]

Try 2p-10 fast glue

To be honest, I do not trust CA glues all that much. All I ever use them for is essentially clamping stuff together temporarily that I later want to take apart with a whack of the hammer. I am going to give it a try, though. Do you use 2p-10 for all the joints, or just the bolster/frame handle joint? Do you use thin, medium, thick or gel? If you want to make a permanent joint with CA, do you apply it to both sides of the joint? I normally only use a drop or two because I intend for the joints to come apart.

Do you use epoxy for gluing in the tang to fill the cavity in the back of the bolster or CA glue for that as well?

I am halfway convinced that the handle would have held up fine with the tang as a tenon to hold things together and epoxy to fill the cavity at the back of the bolster. At the same time, it was a bit too easy to break the joint and I thought it could have come apart while I was shaping the handle pretty easily.

 

[PEU]

As always, any help is greatly appreciated.

I made many of these, I always use a piece of micarta the thickness of the tang, I approximate with the grinder, then I glue the micarta to one of the sides (Side1) and use sandpaper to level tang and micarta. Sometimes a chisel the width of the tang or less is needed for small touchups to remove the glue or any minor imperfection.
Then I make the hole on this side.

The other side is simpler because you can use a larger piece drill the hole and then roughly trace using Side1.

To keep everything together the best way is a corby bolt because solve two problems at once, but one pin does it too, you just need to be confident in the epoxy.

Here are a couple of examples using corby bolts

Pablo

 

[PEU]

And this is another way, always a spacer the thickness of the tang, in this case I used nickel silver pins to keep the sides together (problem 1) and a mosaic pin that goes thru the whole handle including the tang (problem 2)

Pablo

 

[Alex Topfer]

Ok, so I made a frame handle with bolster and no dowel. It turned out really nice, but I had milled the slot a tiny bit too narrow and cracked the bolster... Anyway, I ground the handle to have something to test the joint strength. Just a few taps on the work bench and the bolster came right off at the glue joint. The end grain joint is definitely weaker than the material (paper micarta/ebony).

End grain joints are weak, but (IMO) when the handle is fully assembled all of the force should be transferred to the tang rather than being placed on the bolster/handle joint. Adding a small pin won't hurt anything, so you can do that too.

 

[HSC ///]

To be honest, I do not trust CA glues all that much. All I ever use them for is essentially clamping stuff together temporarily that I later want to take apart with a whack of the hammer. I am going to give it a try, though. Do you use 2p-10 for all the joints, or just the bolster/frame handle joint? Do you use thin, medium, thick or gel? If you want to make a permanent joint with CA, do you apply it to both sides of the joint? I normally only use a drop or two because I intend for the joints to come apart.

Do you use epoxy for gluing in the tang to fill the cavity in the back of the bolster or CA glue for that as well?

I am halfway convinced that the handle would have held up fine with the tang as a tenon to hold things together and epoxy to fill the cavity at the back of the bolster. At the same time, it was a bit too easy to break the joint and I thought it could have come apart while I was shaping the handle pretty easily.

I can understand you don't trust them.

yes I use it for all joints, except metal spacers
I like the medium
I only apply it to one side
yes I use epoxy as you asked.

 

[Hubert S.]

I can understand you don't trust them.

yes I use it for all joints, except metal spacers
I like the medium
I only apply it to one side
yes I use epoxy as you asked.

Thank you for all your help. I will give it a try.

 

[HSC ///]

Thank you for all your help. I will give it a try.

I found that making "X cuts" in the joint faces with a sharp knife or razor blade is effective in increasing the surface area for whatever glue is used. Score the face with lines at a 45 angle, then score the same face 90 degrees to the first scoring lines,

 

[Hubert S.]

I found that making "X cuts" in the joint faces with a sharp knife or razor blade is effective in increasing the surface area for whatever glue is used. Score the face with lines at a 45 angle, then score the same face 90 degrees to the first scoring lines,

I've got everything together for another try, this time with 2p10. As I am getting ready to put the frame handle together, I am wondering how to prevent the glue squeeze-out from closing up the tang slot. I was going to glue one scale to the spacer with the tang slot first. At this point, I can still scrape out any squeeze-out with a chisel, but what do I do for the second scale? With epoxy, I use the tang to clean out the slot, but with the fast cure time of 2p10, I don't think that's going to work, or is it?

 

[HSC ///]

I've got everything together for another try, this time with 2p10. As I am getting ready to put the frame handle together, I am wondering how to prevent the glue squeeze-out from closing up the tang slot. I was going to glue one scale to the spacer with the tang slot first. At this point, I can still scrape out any squeeze-out with a chisel, but what do I do for the second scale? With epoxy, I use the tang to clean out the slot, but with the fast cure time of 2p10, I don't think that's going to work, or is it?

I prefer the medium glue.

Don’t overdo it and don’t over think it.
Practice on some dummy wood and see how much squeezes out. I’ve never had a problem with this concern.

Any squeeze out should not have any impact unless U have such a precise fit of the tang in the frame. I don’t, except at the entry point or very front of the handle.

btw I’m doing less frame handles now and just going for 2 piece handles with the tang slot mortised out.

 

[HSC ///]

I've got everything together for another try, this time with 2p10. As I am getting ready to put the frame handle together, I am wondering how to prevent the glue squeeze-out from closing up the tang slot. I was going to glue one scale to the spacer with the tang slot first. At this point, I can still scrape out any squeeze-out with a chisel, but what do I do for the second scale? With epoxy, I use the tang to clean out the slot, but with the fast cure time of 2p10, I don't think that's going to work, or is it?

First have a beer or whatever.
Then glue

 

[Hubert S.]

First have a beer or whatever.
Then glue

Thank you for the picture and the suggestion. I am about to have a drink, the glue-up can wait until tomorrow.

 

[Hubert S.]

I ended up using medium thickness 2p10 to glue a new micarta ferrule to the handle I showed in post #19. That worked really well and there are no visible gaps. Grinding the ferrule flat with the existing handle turned out to be more challenging than I thought and I did not get the facets as even as I would have liked. I kept making "improvements" to one of the facets only to discover that its neighbors now looked off. Eventually, I got the top of the handle looking decent and stopped while I still had some handle left... The blade is not glued in yet, I plan on doing that later today. It is a 150mm petty knife. I have another blank already heat treated ready for grinding and will try the all 2p10 construction on that one, but it might be a few weeks before I can get to that.