How To make perfect multi piece knife handle scales every time!!!

well guys thanks for coming back for another video today i'm going to be putting together a set of scales for a new design and that's kind of oily but this is the trekker t double xl and i went with just my really rough stone wash finish on it and uh this is 1095 steel and i've been trying to decide what to do for scales so when i can't decide i go into my drawer and i kind of look at what's been in there for a while and i decided to do a set of multi-piece handles and that's kind of what we're going to be going over in this video is how i put them together and how i'm going to be using this new disc grinder to make sure that every part is super super square and so there's no gaps everything's really nice when i go to glue these up so to start we're going to use this really nice looking set of stabilized tulia burl i believe it's how you pronounce it really really really nice material and then i had this leftover little piece of white ivory yuma and i'm going to use this as a little inlay and then i think what i'm going to do is use some black g10 for a spacer in between in between the tuiburl and the yuma so i'm going to go ahead and show you guys my process on how i do this and how i'm going to use this new disc sander from beaumont metalworks to make sure that everything's really good and squared up and everything turns out really good okay so let me show you really quick kind of a bit idea on what i'm doing so i quickly kind of traced out my scale and this is what i want it to look like okay i've got my pinholes and then that's going to be my inlay with that yuma piece so the key to this is i've got this piece which i think is about two inches across and i marked down the middle of it because both of these pieces when i cut this like this has to be exactly the same size or else when you go to glue your scales together um it'll look a little wonky so the first step that i like to do is cut these at whatever angle you want your inlay to be for whatever reason i always do mine on an angle um i think it kind of looks good with how i do the plunge and how the front of my handle skills look so you could do this however you want but i'm gonna go set it up on my miter saw and cut it at whatever angle that is maybe 30 degrees i think is what i set it at 33 something like that um and then i'll kind of show you how i prep everything and how i start getting everything squared up to make sure everything fits good see i cut them both at the same time okay so i just went over and cut this on the portable band saw doesn't have to be perfect because we're going to square everything up and then i cut four pieces of g10 okay and this is point zero six zero thickness g10 uh that's what i use for all my spacers and liners so the whole idea is this is gonna be well it's kind of upside down for you guys this is gonna go here like this and then this is gonna go in here like this and then another one another black piece and then the rest of that wood okay so you kind of get the idea now the main reason i got this disk sander right here this grinder whatever you want to call it is for this right here is when you cut these things espec i mean right off the miter saw you saw this right here is not at all square or clean it's a horrible cut and if you can see so i've got a nice flat piece right here well it doesn't really show up but there's gaps and it's never even okay so what i went ahead and did let me show you guys this really quick is this disc grinder has a work rest okay and this work rest i set it to where this is completely 90 degrees to the face of this okay so technically i should be able to set one of these pieces on here like this and just touch it on that disc and every part will be perfectly perfectly square so i'm gonna go ahead and do that and show you guys the process um what i did is i used a 120 grit piece of rhino wet sandpaper on there and i attached it using this stuff right here which is feathering disc adhesive and supposedly this stuff makes it where you can peel that sandpaper off and put a new one on without a bunch of mess so i thought a 120 grit would be good it'll remove enough material and it'll also give the scales enough kind of grit for that epoxy to bond to so i'm gonna flip the camera around and show you guys this process okay so this one does have a speed control um forward and reverse i'm just gonna run it forward and i'm gonna run it really slow and just pay really close attention that everything's nice and square and even and uh let the camera roll and see how it goes so right there we're at 20 power here's my first scale piece you guys can probably kind of see it cut um i don't think it's going to show up in the camera but you can tell that that gap right there is just not very even okay so i just did a really quick tap right there and all i'm doing is getting rid of that uh kind of where that saw blade hit that and we're kind of checking it and i can already tell that just from doing that right there it is perfect i mean just right on the money so i'm super super happy with that i'm gonna go ahead and do the other one and then what i have to do with these because these are my inlay pieces okay i have to make sure that these are the same size i think i already said that um but you can use a micrometer or however you want to do it and make sure that these are perfectly square i'm obviously going to use the disc grinder as well and make sure they're the same size super super important make sure these are the same size okay so i got both of my uh set of scales squared up perfectly and i cannot explain to you how nice this thing is um i've done if you've been following along i've made a lot of multi-piece handles um and i always even with this really good grinder with a flat platen with a work rest um it's not perfect perfectly square a lot of times what happens is you'll get little warps and stuff in your platen or whatever it is it's just super tricky to get things squared up as as easily as it is with one of these disc grinders so the main reason i got one of these is for this right here and i am just super stoked with how good it works so um i'm gonna it's just hard to show but it's just perfectly square i mean just right on the money and that is going to make for just a really easy clean glue up and i'm going to get these pieces of yuma squared up and get everything prepped what i like to do is just take all my little g10 pieces and i square one side whatever sides going down when i glue up that's the important side scuff everything with like a 40 or 60 grit sandpaper and then clean it all with acetone before you're ready to epoxy everything together just make sure everything's clean everything's scuffed and that way you get perfect results so i'm gonna go ahead and do that right now and check back in a minute all right so there's our four pieces for our spacers all scuffed up that's a 60 grit belt um just to give a good surface for that epoxy so let me bring over here and we're almost ready to glue up all right so i'm going to show you guys kind of in real time how i do this i'm not going to speed it up or anything so um that way you guys really get the idea i'm just gonna do one of them and then i'll do the other one off camera so that being said the first step is i put a little bit of this acetone lacquer thinner whatever you have on a rag and i clean up my pieces really good okay and then i just set them over here and you can well you can't see in the camera but i'll switch it around in a minute i just have a piece a really good flat piece of hardwood um and then some of that wax paper so nothing sticks to it and i'll do this one first and i clean up those surfaces that are gonna get the epoxy really really good i already cleaned them once off video i like to do everything twice and then clean up your inlay piece and what's kind of fun about this is uh i always save all my little scrap pieces of whatever handles i'm using because there's always a little piece like this you can use for an inlay and i think it just really really sets off a knife when you do something like this it's a little time consuming as you can see but at the end of the day i definitely think it's worth it so what i'm doing right now is using this is g flex epoxy you can use whatever epoxy you have and this is kind of the first step of doing this because there's some people that do this and they use sorry about that guys there's some people that do this and they'll put down a g10 liner to start and then they build off their g10 liner so what i like to do is kind of get my pieces all epoxied up let those harden and then the next day i'll add my liner the reason i do that is i've had some spacers lift up on me a little bit um and then there's a gap between your spacer and your detail liner and it looks horrible you have to start over so i find just doing in two steps works a little bit better i'm going to angle this camera down and show you kind of how i do this okay so first things first we're going to mix up our epoxy really really good and like i said i i've been using g flex a lot and i just got some other epoxy that i'm really really happy with that i'll probably be switching over to it's called blade pro so it's specifically made for knife making and uh i'm really happy with that too but i have this whole bottle use up so what i do this is our first piece i take a little bit of epoxy and i put it on that section you don't have to use a lot that's going to get glued up okay and then i take it let's see you guys can kind of see what i'm doing i take a c-clamp now you can also use just a regular spring clamp or whatever you want to do but i like to really lock this piece in place so it's not going to move on me and a c-clamp does that really good and i like to wear gloves even though you can see the gloves don't last very good for this because i use my hand to spread that epoxy and a little less messy if you got gloves on so this is our one piece of g10 we're gonna set that right on there and you can see right here you guys can't see but i can see our gap between that g10 and wood is just perfect same thing with our yuma inlay we're going to take that epoxy it and slide it in there and i can see right now that our gap is just perfect these are going to come out really really nice so same thing both sides get them epoxied up good slide that on piece of wood a little bit of epoxy and we're going to put that in place now if you guys can kind of see from the angle you can't you want to kind of eyeball like i get down like this and kind of make sure the two pieces of wood are lined up okay and make sure that there's spacer and inlay covering the whole thing and that's why i make our pieces a little big so you can adjust them slide them around a little bit now this is totally up to you how you want to clamp this piece down but c-clamps work really really good they just put a lot of pressure and what i like to do you guys probably can't tell is i'm going to push this piece in a little bit and as i'm pushing it in towards my other material i'm going to clamp it down okay and what that does is it just keeps a good amount of pressure against all the these materials squishing them all together so there's no gap so you should be able to see here i can probably move these just a little bit watch see see i can just barely move those that's perfect these are going to be good and before you're done before you you set up make sure you push these spacers down because sometimes with that epoxy they like to lift up a little bit and then you're going to have gaps so everything's really good and tight the gaps look perfect everything's square and that's going to make a really nice handle so without me getting epoxy all over my phone that's going to be it for today and then i'll check back in tomorrow once this epoxy has cured this is 24 hour epoxy and i'll show you my next step which is adding that g10 liner um and then that'll probably be it for the video i won't show installing it on the knife and all that stuff because i've done that a bunch of times on this channel so i'll check back in tomorrow and uh show you guys what these are looking like all right so it's the next morning and we're gonna take these clamps off of here and see kind of how it went you can see these just pop off there when you use this wax paper and this stuff sometimes kind of rips but it does make it to where it just kind of peels off kind of nice and you don't have a big mess so um let's see if you guys are gonna be able to see everything looks really good nothing moved too much on me and we're looking good so the next step is i'm going to trim off the side pieces a little bit run these on the flat plate and sand these down get this really good and flat and then glue up our g10 liners and make sure everything's good and even still and uh everything looks really really good so let's get those g10 liners ready uh for glue all right so here you can see i've got this side sanded all down and now in this step you can see how important it is to get the widths right on your inlay piece because everything has to line up really good and you can see i got both the top and the bottom are lined up really good perfect size no gaps they're super long obviously so i've got to trim these down a little bit but uh they're looking really really good so far and i think on that note as opposed to me boring you with putting those g10 liners on i'm gonna put a link up here for my video that i did on more in depth on how i add g10 liners to whatever handle material you guys are working on so that's gonna do it for today um i think i covered this pretty good i think i every step of the way if i missed anything make sure you drop it in the comments and i'll be sure to get back with you and help out as much as i can so like always guys thanks for checking out the videos and have a good one

Channel: GentryCustomKnives

Views: 29,078

Keywords: disc grinder, knife making, how to, tutorial, 2x72, knife handles, knife scales

Id: EQiXqC8zx6A

Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021