Super glue finish on stabilized wood??

Lerch

Lerch

Well-Known Member
I am planning on finishing up a knife for a friend this weekend and the handle will be out of spalted maple and boars tusk. I have previously done a handle in spalted maple with a oil finish and i was very happy with the results but i need a finish that will add a protective layer

i had previously seen where someone did a polished super glue finish on some wood that added a very hard protective layer to the wood. Could anyone give me a short lay out on how to do this??

thanks
steve
 
Steve, a super glue finish can be rather easy or a PITA. I go about it a little differently than most as I learned this technique finishing turnings on my lathe. First, you'll need some medium viscosity superglue, either boiled linseed (preferred) or tung oil, paper towels and sand paper ranging from 220-1500 (or higher). Finish the wood to a high grit, clean, apply a few drops of linseed oil to a folded paper towel, rub the wood with oil, remove excess, apply a coat of glue using another folded paper towel. (the oil allows you to move the glue a little easier, and helps dry the glue) You will feel heat as the glue dries. Apply as many coats as you'd like, sanding between coats to take down high/ low spots. When you have applied enough coats, use wet/ dry sandpaper and water to take the finish to as fine a grit as you'd like. I stop at 1500 followed by polishing.

Good luck.
 
thank you sir

Im glad to hear you can do the lindseed oil finish first and then do the super glue finish, i wasnt sure if you could do the two in conjunction with each other

thanks
steve
 
Steve, your title line said stabilized wood. If it is stabilized wood you really don't need to put a durable finish on it; it already has one in the polymer it's impregnated with.

Doug
 
Thanks guys

Doug my thinking was that with a hard type finish on the wood it would be a little more resistant to dings in normal usage. would this not but true? i also thought that maybe it would help to bring a little more design and character out in the wood

would that work?

thanks
steve
 
do a search on CA finish on pens and you ll see how they do it on a lathe and a pen. Very similar process. I ve done it before on pens and it can turn out incredible !
 
The glue will bring out a wet look from the wood. I've used this method on a TON of rehandle projects on kitchen knives and hunters and it holds up well. The best part is repairing a ding or scratch is as easy as taking THIN superglue and carefully putting a few drops on the blemish. Once it dies, you touch up the area with 1000+ grit wet sandpaper and you're done.

Frank, I assume you mean me when you say Jack... sorry about that but Jack Handy is just a writer that I find very amusing... My name is actually Mike, like the other million mikes on this board. hahaha

And no, I have not finished ivory like this but I have done so with a few pieces of giraffe bone and it turned out pretty darn good. I used Luthier Superglue in black to fill the cracks and voids in the bone, then used medium CA without the oil, rather I use some CA Activator... which if you don't have a supply near you, you can sub in a mixture of water and baking soda to speed up the drying process.
 
I don't think that a coating of CA glue would add anything to the durability of the finish. The stabilized wood is impregnated with a hard resin all the way through. If something would ding a stabilized handle I don't think that a thin coat of CA glue would protect it much.

Doug
 
Doug, I've learned that stabilized wood may feel like plastic, but in the end, its still wood. I've tested pieces from different stabilizers and they are all susceptible to water damage under severe conditions. I invite everyone who uses stabilized wood to experiment on their own and see what works. I may still have my test pieces laying around, if I do, I'll shoot photos.
 
well whether or not it adds any protection to the wood exterior as long as it gives the wood the nice "freshly oiled" wet look I will be pretty content with it. I will most likely be trying it on sunday so we will see what happens :)

thanks
steve
 
Keep the coats thin and few. The thicker it get the more brittle it will be. Just dropping it on the ground will chip and crack the finish. I have finished an EDC this way and it is all chipped up. The supper glue did not stay on the full tang very well, chipping away from the spine. I did put about 4 heavy coats on this one. Thinner coats would most likely be better.

Just my thoughts.
 
Lerch said:
well whether or not it adds any protection to the wood exterior as long as it gives the wood the nice "freshly oiled" wet look I will be pretty content with it. I will most likely be trying it on sunday so we will see what happens :)

thanks
steve
Click to expand...

Hey Steve,
Heres my take on the CA finish......Its a lot easier to do it on a lathe with a spinning pen blank than a stationary knife scale. I don't think its necessary to go thru the trouble of all the layers and sanding and trying to get it even, when you can take a properly stabilized handle to a high grit and then buff. The buffer will give you all the high gloss finish you would want.

If the CA finish is just to experiment, then have at it, (we have all tried it I think) but I would also try the buffer on some pro stabilized material. Some guys like to add a little tru oil or ren wax here and there, but for the most part I wouldnt go through the trouble of a CA finish unless my scales were too soft for some reason.

Larry
 
I'm interested in trying the lineseed oil trick Mike928 talked about I have been to his shop and he is a bit of a wood expert he wood everywhere in his garage lol.
 
My piece of stabilized amboyna burl broke at a screw hole as I was putting it together to completion. CA finish would bond the entire handle as one like a clear coat of a bar table.

Dave
 
I agree with doug lester if the wood is stabilized your waisting your time redoing something that is properly done in the first place. Most top stabilization companys and products being used will take alot of abuse. If your looking for a material that works well underwater then their are lots of other materials better suited for the application in which the knife is to be used. Kellyw
 
Well i used a stabilized buckeye burl set of scales i got from Jantz a while back. I didnt use any super glue and instead i sanded the wood to 1000grit and then buffed it on my small buffer with some green rouge. I am happy with the result, it has the "wet" look that i was hoping for and being my first time using buckeye burl i am more than pleased with the results.

heres a pic

DSC_0666.jpg


DSC_0668.jpg


thanks for all the info guys, i am glad i just went ahead and buffed it instead of trying the glue since the wood was already stabilized

thanks
steve
 
Here is a brush I just finished. I applied the finish by hand once it was off the lathe to see if it was any harder/easier than when its spinning. And its just about the same. It was buffed using a plastic buffing compound.

View attachment 30207
 
My daughter, along with Dad's help and guidance, just finished her first knife last week.

It's a small chefs knife that she wanted to call her own. We decided that Dad would initially profile and HT the blade, and everything else would be a joint effort between the two of us, done with simple hand tools as much as possible.

The fly in the ointment was that she wanted to have a mirror polish. I reminded her that much hand sanding was a lot of labor, and may seem a wasted effort afterwards when it got scratched. Still, she insisted it was her knife and that's what she wanted.
(That's OK, because we got to do some experimenting for the Mobile 1 thread.)
Nevertheless, she is no longer as enamored with the "shiny metal finish" after this ordeal.:3:

The wood she picked out for the scales was a leftover piece of Honduran mahogany from a furniture project I did about 25 years ago.
She didn't pick out any burl or otherwise highly-figured hardwood, which struck me as sorta odd considering the effort spent on the blade. Good thing, because all shaping of the wood was done with rasps, files, and sandpaper; the mahogany worked like a dream.

The finish?
Three thin coats of "superglue", sanding between coats, finalized by a final sanding with 1500 grit. We did cheat a little on the "hand tool only" approach because I let her use a felt wheel on the flexshaft to do a final polish. But she's already familiar with using that, so maybe we didn't cheat too bad.

We'll see how the finish holds up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top