# Epoxy & nickel silver spacers



## Matus (Dec 9, 2016)

Hi,

I have just made my first attempt to make a WA handle with 2 nickel silver spacers. The construction of the handle would have been: buffalo horn ferrule, nickel silver (1 mm), black fibre spacer, nickel silver (1 mm), black fibre spacer, stabilised wood.

I have de-greased the nickel silver spacers, then applied BladeBond HT epoxy to every surface, clamped it all together and let to cure for 24 hours. After that I sanded the block to a rectangular shape and went on to drill a 10 mm large hole for the dowel. Since I did not pre-drill the nickel silver spacers, I had to switch to drill bit for steel and tried to work carefully. When I was nearly through the first spacer the horn detached from the spacer so cleanly, that there was not a single trace of the glue on the nickel silver.

I have then removed the second nickel silver spacer (what I managed to do with bare hands), ground off the remaining fibre spacer and glued the horn directly onto the wood. That worked, so the handle was saved it will just be less cool.

I am aware of one mistake - I did not use sand paper to make the surface of the nickel silver coarse and left it rather glossy. But I would have still expected to get some acceptable bond. I do not expect the glue to be to blade - it was after all developed for exactly this reason.

As of now I have glued the two pieces of nickel silver with G/flex - tomorrow I should know whether the result will be any better.

Still - I would love to hear your suggestions on how to improve on this. I would definitely like to use metal spacers in the future.

Thanks


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## Dave Martell (Dec 9, 2016)

1. Metal spacers get hot from sanding and drilling, they hold the heat, and epoxy melts at these temps. 

2. Nickel silver is gummy, it loves to grab onto drill bits.

3. Always rough up all surfaces to be epoxied.

4. Pre-drill all parts before glue-up. 

5. Some people use metal pins in metal spacers which obviously will help to keep it all together. Others drill little dimples in these surfaces to make "epoxy pins" when glued up.


This stuff can get frustrating, keep your head up.


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## El Pescador (Dec 9, 2016)

Dave, how about a brass spacer between blond horn and snakewood? Any recommendations?


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## Matus (Dec 9, 2016)

Thank you Dave. I am most certainly not giving up. But I will be doing some testing with scrap pieces of materials before using nickel silver as spacer. I did consider pre-drilling, but I was not sure how to align all the parts. I guess I will have to reconsider that approach.


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## Dave Martell (Dec 9, 2016)

El Pescador said:


> Dave, how about a brass spacer between blond horn and snakewood? Any recommendations?




Yeah - don't do it


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## milkbaby (Dec 9, 2016)

Epoxy also needs a minimum film thickness, if you clamp it down too tight, you can starve the joint of epoxy.

The most recent knife that I made, I had copper spacers to wood and to G10, and heat from grinding caused delaminations. I got copper to reglue to G10 successfully with CA glue in one case.


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## Dave Martell (Dec 9, 2016)

Matus said:


> Thank you Dave. I am most certainly not giving up. But I will be doing some testing with scrap pieces of materials before using nickel silver as spacer. I did consider pre-drilling, but I was not sure how to align all the parts. I guess I will have to reconsider that approach.




Aligning up the pieces with the dowel is the tricky part I think. I've never tried it so I don't really know though.


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## apicius9 (Dec 9, 2016)

Dave Martell said:


> Yeah - don't do it



lus1: Blond horn burns easily from the heat of the metal spacers. Only works if you work very slowly, I sometimes even have a bowl with water there in case the metal gets too hot. Metal spacers suck. Not sure how others do it, but I don't see any short cuts. As Dave mentioned, predrilling is best, then cutting it close to the final shape so you don't have to sand too much away. Most epoxies melt at 250-300F, and a thin metal spacer can get hotter than that in seconds. When I started out, the same thing kept happening to me, Matus, handles just kept falling apart on the sander. Using the inside dowels is extra work, you have to work slower and spend more time on them, and sanding works best with fresh belts which usually get shredded by sanding just a few of them...

Stefan


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## apicius9 (Dec 9, 2016)

milkbaby said:


> Epoxy also needs a minimum film thickness, if you clamp it down too tight, you can starve the joint of epoxy.
> 
> The most recent knife that I made, I had copper spacers to wood and to G10, and heat from grinding caused delaminations. I got copper to reglue to G10 successfully with CA glue in one case.



I 'dont even clamp them anymore because of that. if the surface is not perfect, pieces keep sliding around even when clamped. I just roughen the surfaces, with denser woods I take the Foredom and drill mini dimples into the surfaces so the epoxy has something to hold on to, then just stick them together. When the epoxy starts setting, I press them together to make sure I don't have any visible glue lines. 


Stefan


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## jessf (Dec 9, 2016)

Heat build up is a huge problem with metal and epoxy. I found that jb weld holds up well to heat but still has its failure point. I haven't used the epoxy you mentioned. When i do sand metal components glued to wood i do so i small stages and often touch the metal to a block of aluminium as a heat sink. If the metal is too hot to touch with your figures it's too hot the for the epoxy. If you can get all the parts as close to their final dimension before gluing the that means less sanding and less heat cycling of the epoxy. Pre-drilling as has been mentioned is good too. Also something to consider is that both the wood and the antler will hold heat as well and it will attack the epoxy.

And of course scuffing and cleaning the parts is essential.


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## apicius9 (Dec 9, 2016)

jessf said:


> Heat build up is a huge problem with metal and epoxy. I found that jb weld holds up well to heat but still has its failure point. I haven't used the epoxy you mentioned. When i do sand metal components glued to wood i do so i small stages and often touch the metal to a block of aluminium as a heat sink. If the metal is too hot to touch with your figures it's too hot the for the epoxy. If you can get all the parts as close to their final dimension before gluing the that means less sanding and less heat cycling of the epoxy. Pre-drilling as has been mentioned is good too. Also something to consider is that both the wood and the antler will hold heat as well and it will attack the epoxy.
> 
> And of course scuffing and cleaning the parts is essential.



Yup, JB Weld is good but I don't like to work with it. FWIW, the non-gray epoxy with the highest temp tolerance that I found is Acraglas from Brownells. Gun smiths use that for embedding metal parts into the wood parts. 

Stefan


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## jessf (Dec 9, 2016)

So far ive used jb weld when gluing the mokume to other metal. The greyness of the jb blends with the nickel metal colour and disappears. On the latest knife i used a combination of jb and epoxy depending on which part was being glued to what. Wood to wood, epoxy. Wood to metal jb. Metal to metal jb. If i used bras then jb wouldn't work any more as the colour would be off.


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## milkbaby (Dec 9, 2016)

Additonally, when grinding the metal spacers, I found that wetting with water, using coarse fresh belts, and being patient helped a bit with the heat build up. You could also get the natural materials close on the sander and carefully file the metal and rest with files.

Thanks Stefan and jessf for the practical info on specific adhesives!

A digression, I'm thinking of just using wood glue for most wood to wood joints, what do y'all think?


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## jessf (Dec 9, 2016)

Wood glue is fine. Needs clamping of course and that might get tricky if parts start to move.


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## CPD (Dec 9, 2016)

+10 to Dave and Stefan's earlier answers. 

Epoxy doesn't like heat so if you're going to use metal spacers that conduct heat, its best to predrill and try to minimize the amount of grinding necessary. I always use dowel construction for metal spacers as well. It's more work and can be tedious to get all centered properly but the dowel helps keep things aligned, and more importantly,provides extra strength.

re the wood glue question for wood on wood, I've got to slightly disagree (in theory, anyway). Wood glue will definitely hold as far as strength goes for wood on wood but if you want to insure a long lasting handle that doesn't warp - dependent on materials and climate your in, it may not be as ideal. If you're mixing different woods (and potentially different grain alignment patterns), they're going to expand and contract at different rates over time which can lead to warping. This is more likely to be an issue with unstabilized exotic woods in our hobby than combining a few stabilized pieces.....but it happens. For a handle that's going to last, especially if its in use in a pro kitchen and gets wet in regularly cleaning - a premium epoxy like g/flex which is designed to allow some small elasticity to the glue joint is a better choice. This may be a matter of "over engineering" for many but given the time we all sometimes spend making exotic handles, for me - I'd rather take that route than find my handle's gotten out of whack 6 months or a year later.


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## jessf (Dec 9, 2016)

Ok but in practice ive had no issues. There are many different types of wood glue as well. I've had success with basic weld bond for gluing up veneer into banding for handles. Ive also used wood glue for patio furniture so once it's set up it can handle abuse. If i was noticing differential expansion in my handles i'd first think i didn't stabalize them well enough or combined the wrong types of wood. Super oily with super soft for instance. A glue joint can only compensate for my lack of foresight and not really prevent it.


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## Matus (Dec 10, 2016)

Thank you for your replies. I have indeed underestimated the heat issue. Probably because I already did a few handles which had a 3-5 mm thick brass ferrule and wooden body and they did not have the issues (I did try to be careful when grinding). But there the difference was, that the ferrule was press-fit onto the tang and the epoxy 'only' held the wood in place (these handles did not have a dowel and were shaped directly on the tang)

I will definitely go the pre-drill route. I will probably use a short dowel to connect/align the part that will later be drilled-through (I could not fall asleep last night fast enough and was mulling over this issue) that should solve the problem.

Now I only need to test this particular epoxy (which thanks to its higher viscosity is well suited for the task) and make sure I am getting proper bond with the metal part.


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## scotchef38 (Dec 10, 2016)

I had the same issue with my limitd experience in handle making but once i switched to Gorilla glue i havent had this issue occur again.


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## Matus (Dec 11, 2016)

Just a quick update. The the nickel silver plates that I have glued together with G/flex for testing seem to stick to each other very well. I will try to drill through them to see how the bond will react to heat. Maybe the BladeBond Ultra (sorry, it was Ultra, not the HT) is more sensitive to higher temperatures. That is however, just a speculation at this moment.


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## merlijny2k (Dec 11, 2016)

What type of woodglue are you referring to? I generally see two types being sold most. The classic white kind and the polyurethane one that foams. I've only made two handles so far and reglued one loose Japanese handle. So far i'm happy enough with the PU glue. Works faster than epoxy as you don't have to mix, really long working time which is nice for a beginner like me and i'm yet to bump me head into any drawbacks.


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## NO ChoP! (Dec 13, 2016)

I drill all my pieces with a 1/8 bit, followed with a 1/2" bit. I dont go all the way through the ferrule, as I do two additional 1/8" holes, and connect them all together to form a tang slot. I cut a 1/2" dowel to size, and saw a slot down the middle. I fit all the pieces until they mate perfectly. I also will fit the knife tang even with all the parts loose. If it's too tight, I will heat the tang and burn it in. I will do 90% of the shaping before I even epoxy it up. Once everything is nearly shaped, and fitting nicely, I will epoxy, and use electrical tape to hold it all snuggly.


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## jessf (Dec 13, 2016)

PVA is the genertic name of glue i was thinking of. i should have specified that there are many different "brands" of that type; some of which are water proof. Works well on non-oily woods. I use it for laminating veneer for banding. 



merlijny2k said:


> What type of woodglue are you referring to? I generally see two types being sold most. The classic white kind and the polyurethane one that foams. I've only made two handles so far and reglued one loose Japanese handle. So far i'm happy enough with the PU glue. Works faster than epoxy as you don't have to mix, really long working time which is nice for a beginner like me and i'm yet to bump me head into any drawbacks.


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## NO ChoP! (Dec 13, 2016)

Also, I find making westerns to be much more organic. Making a wa is precision work. Failure is usually catastrophic. After many failures, one tends to overthink and overplan. Any shortcut I ever took bit me in the ass.


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## Matus (Dec 14, 2016)

I feel exactly the opposite way  I have not 'dared' yet to make a western style handle. Mainly because these would look funky (just my personal feel about it) with a dowel and without one I have yet to find an easy way how to make a tang slot that is not more than 3 mm wide. Even the needle rasps are thicker. With dowel the whole process is easier + I can finish the handle before mounting. I do plan to give western handle a try soon, but I have to get the process for making the tang hole (that is not too large so that I can taper the ferrule) figured out (work in progress).

I agree though that western hadle leaves room to fix or hide small mistakes, but on WA these can mostly be avoided as you only sand flat surfaces.


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## merlijny2k (Dec 14, 2016)

Hmm, i think of western handles mostly as two scales, one on either side, and a couple of rivets or corby's. You seem to have something else in mind though?


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## jessf (Dec 14, 2016)

Hidden tang style western.


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## merlijny2k (Dec 17, 2016)

What is also referred to as 'barrel handle' like what is on a zwilling 1731 for example?

If i recall correctly that type historically came with a forged tang that was more or less round? Why don't you fatten the tang up with some thin metal strips glued to each side, and then fit into a larger and easier to make hole? With a small knife balance can quickly become an issue but for a gyuto size knife a little bit more metal in the handle wont hurt.


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