Hello out there! I was formerly signed in as warden, but I finally joined! My question is this:
I recently finished my first knife (sort of, anyway), from start to finish. It is a dropped hunter I made via stock removal from new O-1. Not to brag, but it turned out wonderfully (especially for my first completed knife). It has a brass guard and micarta handles. Full tapered tang. Everything was going fine until I tried finishing the handle. I didn't have a step drill, so I drilled the hole for the screw and used a counterbore for the nut. Fine, right? I thought so. However, the counterbore didn't go quite deep enough, and when I was sanding the handle down, I sanded through the brass nut on one of the Loveless bolts, messing up the handle. At this point, everything was epoxied and set. I had a spare Loveless bolt, so I thought I would just replace the one I messed up. Wrong! I couldn't drill out the screw, as it had been epoxied in place. I drilled as much as I could out and, using my spare Loveless bolt I cut and sanded the bolt where it fit in the hole with the missing bolt and epoxied it in place. Since the handle was already epoxied in place (with the screw inside), will this permanently mess up the strength of my handle without replacing the bad bolt or will the original screw hold the handle in place, with the spare covering it (for cosmetic purposes? I used two Loveless bolts in the handle. The other one is fine.

Joe,

Congratulations on your first knife. Without seeing how much of the original bolt was removed, I would suspect that it is not as strong as an intact bolt, but probably still as strong as a normal pin. Most full tang knives are assembled with pins without problems.

Brett

Joe- congratulations! It only took you one knife to understand what knifemaking is all about. It is about thinking things out, dealing with problems when they come up (and you did fine), and learning from your experience. Well done, sir.

you shoulkd be just fine...I attach most handles with 1/8 pins and a 1/3 tubing....I do file in notches in the pins put do not pin them....I have never had a prob with this!

It will probably be fine like it is, but if it ever happens again and you want to remove the screw here is a easy way to get it out.
Just get a soldering iron and put one of the small tips in it or grind a tip to a diameter just smaller than the screw. Touch the tip of the iron to the end of the screw and hold it there until the screw heats up enough to soften the epoxy and just push it out. Don't ask why I had to figure this out. :)
Works every time, cause heat is epoxies worst enemy.
Hope this helps.
Mike

Give Acra-glass gel from Brownells a try. It is a bedding compound specially formulated for rifles, and it is very heat resistant. I like it better than the 24 hour epoxy from K&G and Devcon just doesn't compare.

Brett

Thanks for all the info, guys. I never thought about the soldering iron and heating up the epoxy. The fix I tried worked, however, and I was able to save the knife handle. I wish I had a way to put pictures on this site cuz I'm awfully proud of my first completed knife. It aint the greatest thing in the world, but it's mine, and I already have someone who wants to pay me to make a knife for them. In response to the last response, I haven't tried the acra-glas to attach a knife handle, but I have used it in the past to repair several knife handles, including the handle on my mom's Henckel's cleaver. The stuff is outstanding, but I'm not sure I'm ready for the kind of commitment acra-glas entails. The stuff's way stronger than JB Weld.