Thread: First Micarta Scales

Just thought to show a few snapshots of the latest restore results.

This is that old Gottlieb-Hammesfahr blade which I have pictured in another thread related to sanding and polishing. Now it is finally bedded down in a new set of Micarta scales which I have been working on.

This Micarta is composed of eight layers of red, cotton cloth. I was lucky enough to find some water-clear epoxy casting resin and I feel pretty good about the results of the lay-up and clamping procedures. As this was a first ever go-round, I didn’t take any photographs of making the Micarta, but I am contemplating doing so during a future attempt.

Those eight layers of cloth pressed down into a thickness of almost exactly 3mm. The epoxy is a slow-cure mix that sets in 24 hours. Even after it was set, I gave the Micarta another four or five days of sitting before I started to work it.

I cut the Micarta using a scroll saw and a special skip-tooth blade. Following that I used an 80-grit flap wheel to roughly chamfer off the edges of the scales, after which it was nothing more than a lot of patient hand sanding. The sanding grits used were: 80, 100, 120, 150, 180, 240, 320, 400, 500, 600, 800, 1200, 1500 and then on to some wheel buffing to bring up the shine. The pins are 2mm brass set into lathe-turned, 4mm wide washers. The spacer is black acrylic plastic.

The only part of the whole project that caused me any concern was the final buffing of the Micarta, and that, simply because I’m not quite sure what the best buffing compounds for this might be. If anyone has any experiences or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

For the rest, I’m absolutely chuffed with the results and finishing a project like this gives one quite a lot of satisfaction.

One more very satisfying aspect of this was finally being able to give this blade a good test on my whiskers. I give it two thumbs up here. It was a fine shave. If you happen on one of these blades I definitely recommend you give it a go.

- Ignatz