Celluloid Replacement Therapy For Some Westerns
Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 7:48 pm
Here are some knives I recently returned to Cal, (tongueriver), after replacing the celluloid handles. I had had these knives embarrassingly long, two years; through lots of health issues, at least one surgery and several hospitalizations, the death of my best friend and my two favorite dogs. Now that write it all down, I think I’m glad they’re gone, LOL!
Cal was very gracious and patient through all of the ups and downs and well they were three folders that I returned that I had not worked on, they seem to be very stable and have not shown any additional signs of offgassing.
I thought I had taken before pictures of these knives, but I haven’t found them yet.
I did take a few pictures of Work in Progress (WIP) on a couple of the knives and I will post those. There are quite a few pictures, too many to put in one post and I don’t have time to sit down and post them all today anyway, but I will post the pictures of the finish knives and the work on the knife with the mammoth ivory handle.
Here are the work in progress pictures of the knife that ended up with the mammoth ivory.
These pictures are labeled Denver because the knife had celluloid handles that said Denver on them. Maybe it was a souvenir knife or an advertising knife, perhaps Cal knows.
A – As you can see in the first picture I have just removed the celluloid and the pieces of black backing material.
B – The second picture shows the sandwich of materials with celluloid on the top which built the handle up to give it its thickness. You can see the bifurcated tang in the background.
C – This is the black paper micarta in the ivory laid out beside the handle before installation.
D 1 & 2 – This is the black paper micarta installed and rough sanded on the edges.
E – Fitting the ivory.
F – Ivory rough fitted and drilled, ready to be pinned and hafted.
G – View of handle from the bottom.
H – Ivory handle installed and rough sanded to 120 grit.
Notice I have not installed the pins at this point. When working with ivory I find it best to work the handle all the way down to the finest grid of abrasive I will use, then polish the ivory before installing the pins. The reason for this is when you sand or polish you are removing little pieces of the brass as you do so, and your sandpaper or your abrasive wheel will deposit those little pieces in the ivory. I like to finish ivory and white bone or light colored bone to the finest grit before adding the pins. When working with ivory and white bone I will usually coat the entire handle with a light coat of superglue to prevent the rouge and bits of brass from leaving marks on the unsealed ivory.
I’m going to end this post and start a second post to show some of the finished knives.
Cal was very gracious and patient through all of the ups and downs and well they were three folders that I returned that I had not worked on, they seem to be very stable and have not shown any additional signs of offgassing.
I thought I had taken before pictures of these knives, but I haven’t found them yet.
I did take a few pictures of Work in Progress (WIP) on a couple of the knives and I will post those. There are quite a few pictures, too many to put in one post and I don’t have time to sit down and post them all today anyway, but I will post the pictures of the finish knives and the work on the knife with the mammoth ivory handle.
Here are the work in progress pictures of the knife that ended up with the mammoth ivory.
These pictures are labeled Denver because the knife had celluloid handles that said Denver on them. Maybe it was a souvenir knife or an advertising knife, perhaps Cal knows.
A – As you can see in the first picture I have just removed the celluloid and the pieces of black backing material.
I’m going to end this post and start a second post to show some of the finished knives.
