DIY Micarta Knife Scales (pic heavy)

[Regulator]

So I decided to try my hand at micarta or jeancarta scales for my kukri. Here’s how it went.

Found some brown and green jeans at a second hand shop and cut into strips.




Saturated strips in fiberglass resin and layered them on wax paper alternating colors into a stack a bit thicker than I wanted my scales to be.




Folded the wax paper around the stack and clamped the stack to eliminate air bubbles and hold the stack flat as it cured.




During this time I bead blasted the blade, got the rough edge shaped and seasoned the blade much like you would with cast iron. We’ll see how well that works out. I then cut the scales out of the cured slab, drilled my holes and attached them with epoxy.





My wife has a cheap Bowie that she likes to throw. I re-handled hers as well, blue and orange, Bronco's fan



With various sanders and 4 ½ inch grinders with flap wheels I did most of the shaping. Then went to a Dremel tool and hand sanding.



Once I liked the shape I gave hers a few coats of lacquer and mine a couple coats of linseed oil. I also re-covered my sheath and added mollee straps so I can attach a pouch to it. It also has 18’ of para cord on it now.






I have to work on the edge some more now but I’m pleased with the handles. The kukri fits in the hand nice and the scales provide a good grip. The Bowie is rather slick handled and the wife says it’s easy to release when throwing.

Fun and easy project. Any questions hit me up.

[Jeriah]

Holy CRAP that looks good, and you make it look so easy! I wanna try now! Looks like the perfect thing for any one of a number of project blades. Thanks for posting that.

I want to make one using scrap MultiCam Cordura. Just have to find the right blade to use. (I'm not set up to forge my own right now, or even really do a stock removal blade, more's the pity.)

[Contra]

wow nice job!

[NYKh]

Outstanding, looks good.

I'm sure it takes an attention to detail to get it fit and finished well, but over all it doesn't look that challenging to try out.

[elkhills]

Wow, nice work man! Those turned out really nice. I like everything about this... except that "liking the Broncos" part.

[Shaper]

Subscribed.

Well done!

[Murph]

How long did it take to do each step of the project?

[TDW586]

That looks utterly awesome, excellent work.

[Regulator]

Multicam might be pretty cool Jeriah

NYKh, yep, it’s not to difficult at all. The tang on mine isn’t the same thickness the whole length and I have that curved butt that I had to fit around… It took considerably more time than if you had a flat tang and a regular shaped handle.

elkhills, I don’t really tease her much about the Bronco’s. She does throw a Bowie after all.

Murph, Initial cutting and epoxy- 1 hour, wait a day for epoxy to cure, cut scales and drill- 1 hour, epoxy onto blade and wait another day, shaping will depend on what you need to do to make it the way you want it.

Now, with that said, I spent another day seasoning the blade, 10 minutes to bead blast it and a few hours to bake the coating on and probably an hour in extra sanding to make the scales mate to the unusual shape of the tang and end plate. The sheath was probably 2 hours counting the sewing on of the straps.

You could easily do it two days and 90% of that would be waiting on epoxy to dry.

Thanks for the comments guys.

[Dubbya]

Wow! Great job. Thanks for posting this up. I'll have to give it a go myself.

[TravisM.1]

I've been thinking of making a new set of grip inserts for my SP101. This just might be the stuff.

[JTNieman]

I got a cheap Academy knife (Winchester 'brand' iirc. Made by Gerber) that I lug around with me everywhere. ~5" fixed blade, maybe 6". It is a full tang blade, pretty thick, with two pins/screws, whatever. It'd be a perfect way to learn to make new scales. I always thought I'd want to try it. Now your post makes me think I'd try Micarta when/if I do.

One thing (because I was raised and schooled to always provide something in critique) that I might suggest is that maybe on the top layer, you make sure you sand it down so that only one color is showing on top, to make the lines more concentric like wood. Example being the Broncos bowie, where you kind of have blue and orange looking sorta tie-dyed back and forth. But your blue/green has a solid, uninterupted green band at top. I think it looks 'better' with a solid band, but maybe you disagree, and did the Bronco knife intentionally as it is.

Gives me something to consider when/if I try my hand at micarta at least. That's a pretty awesome job you did there.

[Sealegs]

Full of win. I did a couple of scales out of old jeans inspired by this thread http://www.britishblades.com/forums/sho ... -intensive) a few years ago.

I really like the look of your alternated fabrics.

[the_alias]

Tagged - Great stuff Regulator!
Random noob question. I want to try this technique in making a knife - would it work with a block of micarta? My gut says no for some reason...
Thanks in advance!

[Sealegs]

Tagged - Great stuff Regulator!
Random noob question. I want to try this technique in making a knife - would it work with a block of micarta? My gut says no for some reason...
Thanks in advance!

I don't see why not? I've seen full hidden tang micarta handles. AcraGlass from Brownells is a really good glue.

[Gregory Merlon]

Very nice. I too am tempted to try this with pistol grips now.

[Regulator]

JamesCannon, Yeah, the Bowie was a bit of an experiment. The cloth was very thin, thinner than sheet material even. I had some plywood that had been in the weather for a while and the grain was raised, so.. I thought perhaps if I used those boards to clamp it, the grain pattern would transfer to the resin block. It did for the most part. Now my hope was to sand it down where the orange would come through in a grain pattern, so it would look similar to blue and orange wood. Well, you see how it worked out. All things considered it turned out ok. If I had a disk sander and a little thicker material it would have been a bit better. Next time right

Sealegs, pics would be cool if you have any.

the_alias, I think that technique would be fine. You’re basically just working with solid resin. Drills easy. I was thinking of doing a little paring knife like that with one of my scrap pieces.

You guys that try it out for pistol grips be sure to put up pics. I think black and white denim scales would be pretty badass. I’m also thinking about how hard it would be to put some kind of design in the handle as well. Like a red bio-hazard symbol pressed into the scale or something. Ya know, cause I need more projects..

[SimonZayne]

Very cool project.
Did you just use the one can of resin, or did it take more then that?
I know in my limited experience with fibreglass it always seems to take more then you would think.

[KentsOkay]

Dude this is epically awesome. Now I can carry my honored Wrangler pants everywhere

[Regulator]

SimonZayne, The kukri took about 16oz and the Bowie took about 8oz. I was mixing it up 4oz at a time for ease of use. Both projects came from the single can pictured (not sure the oz in it), and there was just a little bit left. You’ll run out of hardener before you run outta resin.

[MaconCJ7]

Found this in your sig. Awesome job! And since I've been thinking of new grips for my 1911, I'm going to have to try it when I get home. Will post pics if it turns out half ass decent.

Question: Did you use the hardener, or just the resin?

[Regulator]

Found this in your sig. Awesome job! And since I've been thinking of new grips for my 1911, I'm going to have to try it when I get home. Will post pics if it turns out half ass decent.

Question: Did you use the hardener, or just the resin?

Yep, use hardener, otherwise you'll just have a sticky mess. I mixed it up just like the directions call for. A few people mentioned trying their hands at this for pistol grips and such. I'd like to see pics of anyones results or attempts. A pretty easy project with nice results. Good luck!

[JTNieman]

Found this in your sig. Awesome job! And since I've been thinking of new grips for my 1911, I'm going to have to try it when I get home. Will post pics if it turns out half ass decent.

Question: Did you use the hardener, or just the resin?

Yep, use hardener, otherwise you'll just have a sticky mess. I mixed it up just like the directions call for. A few people mentioned trying their hands at this for pistol grips and such. I'd like to see pics of anyones results or attempts. A pretty easy project with nice results. Good luck!

Make sure you buy enough hardener... I bought a can of resin that had a tube of hardener taped to it. I assumed with this package deal that the hardener was sufficient to use for the entirety of the can of resin. Half way through my layers of denim micarta... I had no hardener. I didn't finish my project because I have a hardened bottom 1/3 of a brick, and big floppy goopy jeans on the top 2/3.

I'll try again one day but.. yea... don't do what I did. Ensure you have adequate hardener.

[MaconCJ7]

Great replies from the both of you. Thank you. I figure if the other half doesn't have a bunch of plans for me, this will be my Christmas present to myself.