More hate than love for Kirinite

It's times like this when you shut the machines down and call it a night! This is the second time in two weeks I've had Kirinite do something unexpected. I love the way this stuff finishes but hate working with it!

Ouch, I know how you feel except I've done this with ivory before. Try slightly oversized holes and a 2 degree tapered ream to help prevent side pressure when peening.

Thanks for the tip.

Bummer. Hopefully today goes better for you.

That's a bummer, can't help but think you could turn a negetive into a positive here. Man that knife would look great with a SS bolster or even bolsters made from the same Damascus, and it almost broke in the perfect spot, just a thought though.


Wayne

That looks like a serious delamination on a horizontal plane through the material. Or am I seeing a red liner material underneath the scale?

And those look like synthetic pins. Did that happen from peening? Surely you weren't trying to peen synthetic pins?

Fortunately for me, I really don't like how kirinite looks at all so it makes the decision to not use it that much easier for me, but a material failure like that on that level would have me steering clear of it for good.

I'm curious what happened and what you were doing when the fracture occured?

My first instinct is to ask.... what size pin hole did you drill, and what size is the pin? If you had to "force" the pin into the hole, then the grinding heats/expands the pin......

Like John, I'm not a fan of that particular material.

Epoxied the chip back in, shaped the handle, now I'm sealing the joint with CA glue before wet sanding and polishing. It won't be perfect but it will be functional.... The dead critters won't mind.



It was a tighter that normal fit when assembling the scales, I am most concerned about the delaminated scale from the G10 liner below. I was using 1/8" micarta pins that I turned in the drill with sand paper to insure the fit... Might have been a little tight. I've never had issues with this before, maybe a bad mix of the epoxy??

It was strange that it just snapped off though, there must have been a lot of pressure from the pin. No I wasn't trying to peen the micarta pin.