Bad day with tapered tangs

Well this is making me rethink doing tapered tangs on my knives now. I had three knives I put handles on yesterday. When I went to take all the clamps of and got to cleaning them up two knives turned out good. The third?


Well, needless to say I have grind it all off and start over again!

Problem fixed! I figured what the hay, I'll stick it in the oven to see if I could loosen the epoxy instead of grinding the handle off. It worked! I put the knife in the oven THEN turned it on to 250 and left it in for a hour. I took it out and took my punch to the pins a they came right out. A sharp rap on the bench poped the scales right off the knife!
WHEW!
Now to go and reglue.

Hey, that happened to me about a month ago. Just didn't pay attention when I was clamping things down and ended up with a little gap. You can either go the heat route and loosen things up, or, if parts are glued down with super glue, use the "Un Cure" that's available.

Now, if you have a natural material, such as stag, or wood, etc. the heat can warp things, but try using 200 deg., or even maybe 150-180 deg. and see if that'll loosen things up. I generally go with 200 deg. Thanks, Bob

Hey Guys, Just my two cents worth. What I have found works real well is to extend your handle material about half an inch past the end of the tang and put a c-clamp on the end and clamp it down. I start c-clamping at the guard area and work my way to the back. The one on the end being the last one I put on. Hope this helps. Mark

That certainly ought to bring the edges in contact with each other. However, if the handle slabs are quite thin, you might cause them to bow-up in the middle and eventually even pulling away, again from the edge of the tang. You probably don't want to clamp them too tightly, huh?

Thanks, Mark.

Thanks! I never even considered that.

I'm going to try that the next time I glue up a handle.