All About Pocket Knives

glennbad wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 6:19 pm That looks far better than the one I did some time back...

OLDE CUTLER wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 5:47 pm

glennbad wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 6:19 pm That looks far better than the one I did some time back...

You have some issues with separation or chipping?

OLDE CUTLER wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 3:22 pm I sometimes stop and visit a local custom knife maker just to see what he is working on and shoot the breeze. A while back when I was at his shop he handed me a zip lock bag and said to take it home with me. I asked what it was and he told me it was a pair of wooly mammoth tooth handle material slabs. I looked at the bag and all I saw was a bunch of pieces. I took it home and filed it away. Over the winter now I had occasion to take a closer look at the pile of pieces and started to try to reassemble them to see if it would amount to anything useful. Using a dot of super glue here and there I got 2 fairly good slabs from the pieces, but there were a lot of chips and small pieces missing. I took the slabs and laid them out on my stainless steel flat surface and built a clay dam around them. Then some pouring epoxy resin was mixed up and poured over the slabs, enough to completely cover the material plus a little. The casting epoxy is a very thin almost water consistency that got down into every nook and cranny with the aid of a tooth pick to work out the air bubbles (tip- make certain your dam is strong enough to contain this thin material, a burst or leaky dam would be a disaster).
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After removing the slabs from the form and cleaning them up, it became apparent that one of the slabs was about 1/4 inch too short for my intended knife, a Schrade 6 OT. I had a brand new pair of liners with the bolsters already riveted on, and a LB7 donor knife for blade and lock bar. With the one slab being short, I added a small bolster to the bare end from 1/8 inch brass. The handle slabs were then flat sanded on what would be the inside, and epoxied to a thin piece of red liner material. Then the outside surfaces were flat sanded to remove all of the casting material.

Donor LB7 which provided the blade and lock bar.
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The new 6 OT frame parts
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Gluing the slabs onto the liners on a stainless steel plate.
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The clear acrylic material can be seen in a few places where it filled some voids, but is so transparent that it is not noticeable without looking closely. Note the book match of the slabs.
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Finished product. Salvaging the 2 wooly mammoth slabs was worth the time invested.
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This pair of slabs is not as colorful as a set I had previously done, but still look great on a large knife. See previous one here viewtopic.php?t=57851&hilit=Mammoth
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OLDE CUTLER wrote: ↑Thu Apr 03, 2025 1:09 pm As happened with my previous wooly mammoth tooth rehandle, I saved a couple of small leftover pieces and made a pair of ear rings for my nieces birthday present tomorrow.

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