Thread: In which a n00b experiments with synthetics

Originally Posted by RonnieNC

Nice job all the way around! Blade looks nice and scales fit the frameback perfectly. Curious about shaping your scale design. Did you hand sand all parts or use the dremel or grinder?

Ronnie

Initial design:
I started with a tracing of the blade in ink on draftsman's vellum. I then drew an outline for scales on the vellum in pencil. I tweaked the design a few times before settling on the one you see. I also penciled in a line for the wedge.

One of the coolest things about draftsman's vellum is it does double duty as carbon transfer paper if you load your design up with heavy pencil lines. I used this property to do a carbon transfer onto one of the poly blanks, then flipped the image and traced it onto another piece of vellum to do the other scale (note this step isn't necessary if you can get your hands on double-sided draftsman's vellum).

Cutout:
Working with 1/8" polyester a standard-issue jeweler's saw with #1 blades blasts through this stuff like it's made of butter.

Shaping:
I clamped both scales together with a set of vice grips then contoured the outside edges to roughly match.I used the standard-issue drum sander bit for my dremel for the rough contour work although if I had it to over again I think I would have hand-sanded instead. Continuing with the drum sander I rounded the edges of the scales. A quick pass with 800 grit sandpaper removed the worst of the gouges left over from drum sanding, at which point I started working on the wedge.

Wedge:
Overall process was the same as above. I did a carbon transfer of the overall shape then cut it out with a jeweler's saw. Since the original material was 1/8" thick getting it thinned down was kind if a PITA. I used a sheet of 120 grit sandpaper taped to my workbench to thin and shape the material, then superglued both scales to the wedge and clamped the assembly with a pair of vicegrips to cure for a while.

Edited to add: Max has informed me that glued wedges eventually come apart so I will be going back and pinning the wedge end at some point, probably after I get a belt sander. I'll probably go in and thin the scales down to 1/2 their current thickness while I'm at it.

Fine tuning:
Once the wedge was cured up a bit I went back at the scales with the drum sander to even out any inconsistencies caused by misalignment of the scales and to get the wedge and scales ground flush, then proceeded through 400,800,1200 and 2000 grit sandpaper to get rid of the gouging left over. I finished with tripoly on a buffing wheel followed by blue rouge (supposedly good for shining up plastic).


Overall findings:
The polyester-based synthetics from Masecraft work like a dream if you can get over the smell.