Vulcanized fiber liners.

jdm61

jdm61

itinerant metal pounder
Joined
Aug 12, 2005
Messages
47,357
Yeah,I know, fiber liners are bad, m'kay? But I have a lot of the stuff that I got for free and no G-10 so sue me. My question is what glue should I use to stick the stuff to stabilized wood and Micarta?
 
Well, to do G-10 I use medium thick ca. glue.I use one of those "kids" small paint brushes to spead it out on one surface.
Frank
 
Fiber liners are not bad in my opinion. I have used them for years . I use G-flex epoxy for overnight cure or Loctite for fast cure to stick them to scales. G-10 is more durable but a little harder to work with in my opinion. I use a lot of g-10 but also use vulcanized fiber liners where the thickness of the fiber is what I want. Some is really thin and some is thicker than .030. Larry

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I use Gorilla Glue Super Glue for that. Stuff just stays stuck.
 
I wonder if it would help their water susceptibility to completely coat the fiber liners with either CA glue or empoxy. I would use G-flex if I was gonna use them. I might try to apply some to the exposed edge of liner after the handle was done. I'd then wipe it off, hoping that the liners would have "leached" up some of it to reduce the chances of them taking on water.
 
I've used them three ways, using gorilla glue, west systems epoxy, or clamping them to the scales and stabilizing them to the scales with cactus juice.
 
I don't think fiber liners are bad. I use thin fiber liners and use G-flex glue. Bob Loveless used them and he used nothing but the best. I have made way over 1000 knives with fiber liners and have never had a problem.
 
Personally I like the colours better in the fibre liners compared to g10.
 
Like the others said, my favorite is gorilla glue CA glue to attach the liners to the scale. I then drill holes through the liners and slightly into the scale and use g-flex to attach the lined scale to the tang. That way you get a tang to liner and tang to scale bond with the epoxy.
I see a lot of internet chat about how fiber liners are horrible, but have never seen evidence of it in real life. It's all I use.
 
This thread got me to thinking I need to do an experiment. I'll glue up steel with fibre and scales, and see what happens when I soak it for varying lengths of time. I haven't ever had a problem with any I have done before.
 
Willie71 said:
This thread got me to thinking I need to do an experiment. I'll glue up steel with fibre and scales, and see what happens when I soak it for varying lengths of time. I haven't ever had a problem with any I have done before.
Click to expand...

I happened to have a part of a sheet get wet for a few hours and the portion that was wet was considerably thicker when removed from the moisture.
This piece was not liners just a stand alone piece that had a lot of exposed surface area to absorb moisture.
I'd be curious as well to the effects of limited exposure when used as liners.
I'm sure that if dunked in water and left they could eventually absorb enough to pop the glue joint, but what about for just a short period of time?
 
I've has pieces that got wet warp and swell, but the sanded edge has a very different texture. The only way to know is to do an experiment.
 
I haven't run an experiment on a glued up scale, but I submerged a piece in water for about an hour. Before wetting it was 0.036" thick, after 0.048", and after left alone to dry 0.038". Unfortunately, I only measured the thickness but not change in other dimensions. On the other hand, I imagine it could easily be a problem if the outer edges exposed to water swell but the inside doesn't. One maker showed me multiple pics of handles with fiber spacers and liners between/under wood that broke the wood and detached the scales from the tang.

I wonder if different finishes affect how much and/or how fast water penetrates. I recently made two knives with vulcanized fiber liners and spacers and wet sanded in a bunch of coats of Watco brand tung oil varnish finish to fill the wood grain, and then did a bunch more applications of oil too. That stuff is supposed to soak into wood some, and I imagine it soaks into the vulcanized fiber too? These were kitchen knives, so likely to see a lot of wet and dry cycling as they are used and washed. I haven't heard anything bad about the one I gave away so far, but that doesn't prove anything.

The variety and vividness of the vulcanized fiber colors beats G10 and micarta IMO. That doesn't outweigh the cons of it moving so much it destroys handle scales though.

For everybody who's had problems with vulcanized fiber, it seems like there's somebody else who's never had any issues. I'm really curious to see the results of Warren's experiment!
 
I've used fiber liners in the past, but I really don't anymore. Not only did they absorb moisture, but pretty much any grease, dirt, or otherwise that came into contact with them. I would imagine they'd be fine with some method of stabilization, but I never experimented personally. I do agree that the colors can be a little nicer for certain applications than other liner materials.
 
I'm going to follow this closely. I imagine there could be various quality of fiber liners. Pops and jephco are my providers. Also mechanical fasteners could be a variable. I wash knives in the sink and dry without a second thought, no adverse effects.
If we are talking about swelling after being submerged overnight, ok but is there any wood (non stabilized) that wouldn't have some degree of swelling also?
 
My wife ran a knife I made her with a vulcanized fiber between handle and tang through the dishwasher once. The fiber was thicker that what I like to use. You could see that the fiber had swelled some, but the handle was still attached just fine.
 
I know this thread is a few months old, but I had a chance to do a test today and thought I would share.
I had some scraps of 2 pieces of micarta with a vulcanized fiber liner sandwiched in between. The liner was from Jephco. I wanted to see how a long soak in water would affect the liner with just the edge exposed.
Dry:
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After 9 hours underwater:
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So there was some swelling. 0.0005 of an inch after 9 hours submerged. Not enough to scare me away from fiber liners.
 
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