Need help with (Rag Micarta)

[Gary Riner]

Help

Rag micarta was extinct before i had a chance to see any of it. (must have been something toxic in the young micartas environment. hehehe ) The only picture i ever saw of it was a knife posted on Jerry Hossom's site:


Could probably make something similar if i had good discription of it's makeup.

1.For those of you that have seen some, was it alternate layers of different colors of cloth?

2.Or different colors of cloth all crumpled up together?

3.If it was all crumpled up was the cloth shreaded?

4.What colors were used or would be most desirable?

5.Anyone have any pictures of or a scrap pieces of the actual material? 8o

Thanks in advance for the help.
Gary Riner
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[Jerry Hossom]

My understanding is that Rag Micarta was made by chopping up Micarta scrap and recasting it in fresh resin. Completely random sizes and shapes. It was mostly green and brown in color, with some minor amounts of black and tan as I recall. I have a small piece left that will go one a knife one day. I'll polish up one side and take a pic to post here.

I think it could be made with new material, and I'm sure there would be demand for some pretty wild stuff, but I personally would like to see the original colors used again - camo like. I would certainly be interested in getting some.

There was something particularly noxious about it, compared with other Micartas. In addition to the normally smelly dust, it seemed to give off some noxious vapors when it was ground.

BTW, that knife in the pic rode in one of the first M1A2 Abrams to enter Baghdad...

[Jerry Hossom]

It's not a great pic, but I think you can see the detail...

[Gary Riner]

Jerry
Thanks for posting the picture. I will see if i can make a random pattern in similar colors.

Gald your knife made it to Baghdad. Fantastic.

Be blessed
Gary
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[Jan Dox]

You can find info on making your own in that thread in the Supply department, but making "rag micarta" yourself is much more difficult than making a "normal" laminate of linen, paper, carbon fiber ,etc; with epoxy. The way I would go to experiment is saturating fine torn rags in a plastic bag, (make it wet but don't let the rags swim in the resin) and then empty the the bag in a plastic covered form of the size of the plate you want to make (2.5" wide x5.5"long and .3" high would make a nice set of handle slabs).
Press the mix hard in it with a lid (PE covered) (Get all the airbubbles out!)and let it cure.
(A vacuum and controlled temperature system would be nice of course)
When all went well you now have a nice plate without holes from trapped air.
My experience with homemade laminates is that the industrial variations (Micarta and G10 and G11 etc) are often stronger and can be finished better than our own stuff, but the homemade ones are easier to make exactly "custom" for the project we're working on.(size, thickness etc) ( linen with a very special emotional value to the customer for instance)


Jan