What's Best Sequence for Glueing up Handle

[brad90049]

I have a couple questions about the the best practice for finishing
my handles. Blades have a hidden-tang, guards are made from brass
or nickel silver, spacers are fiber, and handles are wood or stag.
The procedure I now follow is to

1. - Fit all components onto the tang
2. - Rough shape the entire assembly
3. - Disassemble
4. - Finish sand & polish all metal components separately
5. - Leave fiber spacers and handle a little large (0.030" or so)
6. - Epoxy assembly onto tang
7. - Carefully shape fiber spacers and wood to match the
adjacent metal components

With this sequence, I've had problems scratching the metal components
when trying to trim the wood and spacers to fit them. If I scratch the
metal pieces, trying to polish them always seems to mess up the
adjacent wood with a black smear. Masking off the wood with tape
is the only thing I've found to help, but polishing still takes its
toll on the fiber spacers and discolors even the thinest epoxy joint.
And if I use stag instead of wood, the black smearing problem is
even more severe on the white bone.

What's the best way to finish the shape of the handle between the
guard and the stag or wood when you have spacers and epoxy joints
in between? Specifically:

1. Is there a better sequence than I'm using?

2. How can you polish a guard and not mess up adjacent wood or stag?

2. How do you polish matrix pins without smearing the surrounding
wood or bone?


Thanks,

- Brad Smith
Los Angeles

[chrisinbeav]

1. You sequence seems to be alright. It might just be how you are going about it.

2. Polishing a gaurd really isn't that bad. What I have found, do almost all of your finishing on the gaurd by hand. If you are using nickle-silver or brass you should be able to get pretty close to a mirror finish by hand. That leaves less mess on the buffing wheel.

3. Pretty much the same as a gaurd. Really work your handle and pins by hand.

Lastly a couple things I should add. Keep your buffing wheels clean. I have two one for doing steel and soft metals and one for finishing soft steel and handle materials only. This way you can kind of rotate your wheels. The steel only one will blacken real fast and also wear out the quickest. The wood only wheel will darken after time. Once it gets too dark to use on handles switch it to the metals only wheel and get a new one for handle materials. Mask off everything you aren't sanding on. (blades, gaurds, etc...) why create more work?

Chris Nilluka