Reshaping Resiprene

Henry Beige

Henry Beige

Gold Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2015
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I have had my WS 1020 for about a week now, my first venture into Busseville, and my first encounter with Resiprene. The handle is great, comfortable in all positions except one. When I use a saber grip, the corner of the flared butt digs into my palm. To call it a hot spot is an understatement; it hurts like hell.

I have managed to round off the corner a bit using coarse sandpaper, a rasp, and a very coarse stone. It is slow going. The handle material yields to the abrasive and springs back into place without giving up much material.

What do you use to reshape the Resiprene? Is it heresy to consider doing so? Is there a thread or section of this subforum that addresses such topics?
 
Sandpaper has done the trick for me. Especially when used with a block/dowel. One word of warning - just aesthetic, but there may be voids (bubbles) in the material which can be exposed if you remove a lot. I suggest doing the least necessary and then living with it a little before taking off chunks of rubber...
 
This one I believe was done on a belt sander, as noted you may end up with voids left over from what only I can assume are bubbles during the molding process. The result was quite nice, I might add... kind of a mix between the standard Res-C handles (from the 511, Bandicoot, etc.) and the War Dog type handles.







 
Thanks for the replies. I never got back here to see them when they were fresh, so I apologize for not acknowledging them at the time.

In the little bit of reshaping I have done, I got an inkling oof how easy it is to uglify the handle by taking out irregular chunks of material. Maybe that shouldn’t matter on a knife with a name like “Scrap Yard”, but I’d just as soon not make a hack job of it.
 
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