Improved traction inserts.

[Carlos]

As yet we still have no way to economically bring texture to metal handles. Thus we have high traction inserts as an established practice with steel, aluminum, and titanium handles for hard use knives, and we have been stuck with the evil Kraton as the standard traction insert material. Despite its near universal usage it does have several severe weakness, poor resistance to wear, heat, and solvents.



MOD has used "skateboard tape" on its CQD folders as an alternative, but this is really only a good choice if you are going to use the knife with gloves -- equivalent to using sandpaper for grip.



Any thoughts on the priorities of the properties of an insert material? With rubber, some features usually preclude others: high traction vs. oil and solvent resistance, high traction or oil and solvent resistance vs. durability, etc.



A few ideas I had:



1. FRN inserts with molded texture



2. MIM inserts with molded texture



3. More durable rubbers like Neoprene, and Engage (I recall that Al Mar made SERE folders with Neoprene handles -- how did these hold up over time?).



BTW, I take it that rayskin inlays would be too luxurious. <img src="wink.gif" width=15 height=15 align=middle>



Edited by - Carlos on 6/27/2001 12:10:40 AM

[sal]

Hi Carlos. FRN with molded coarse texture (like the deck of a racing sailboat) is my current leaning. At least that's what I'm using on the Tempeance FB.

Bob Lum wanted to use a ray skin insert on his folding tanto design. We never got to it.

sal

[Carlos]

Hi Sal,

I recall that Lum's tanto was originally supposed to be G10. Was the rayskin insert supposed to go with the G10 or Ti version?

[sal]

Hi Carlos. the original proto that Bob made was in Titan and he requested an oval kraton insert in the Titan handle. He wanted it to look like rayskin. We planned G10 for production, but went with the Titan instead. The cost of the knife was so high to make that we felt adding the tooling for a kraton injection mold would make the kife cost prohibitive.

sal

[Carlos]

Thanks Sal,

So you can do various colours and molded textures with kraton? That is quite interesting. I didn't know that you could do more with kraton than make it a black lump.

BTW, do you know what they make that simulated rayskin out of? (The stuff they use to hilt economy katana replicas).

[sal]

Carlos. Our C13 has textured kraton.

re; the synthetic rayskin on economy Katanas, Ihave no idea.

sal

[Carlos]

I know this is wandering off topic, but I just had a weird notion: Exotic ceramics have been used for blade materials for awhile now, but has anyone ever tried a ceramic handle? If the handle were molded, then you could have texture that would never wear, a handle that would never rust or corrode in anything, etc. Watch companies that I know of that have used ceramic for watch cases have used a reinforcing structure (sort of like steel reinforced concrete) to help cope with shocks. Would there be a weight advatage or disadvatage with ceramic?

[sal]

I think the ceramic would eventually crack. I think the support structure like steel could hold up, but the ceramic would crack around it.

I think it would be VERY difficult to mold to shape and even more difficult to grind if a flaw existed.

sal

[Carlos]

Hi Sal,

I guess I'll have to dub thee &quot;Official Deflator of Carlos' strange ideas.&quot; <img src="wink.gif" width=15 height=15 align=middle>

BTW, would traction grooved like those on the non-inlay Vesuvius be cost-effectively be implemented on metal scales? I can see how checkering metal would be hideously expensive with all of the large number of operations, but how difficult would it be to cut a couple of channels?

[sal]

Sorry Carlos. I think you get very good ideas, and I'm not always right either.

I think the concept of figuring out a way to make SS have more grip and be lighter would greatly help the SS ATR. Lotsa holes is ok, but harder to clean.

sal

[Carlos]

Hi Sal,

That's just my humour. <img src="smile.gif" width=15 height=15 align=middle>

I have chewed on the SS ATR problem for awhile and I think the fundamental problem is that it was designed to be in titanium. The large handle with wide scales naturally follows from the lightness of the metal, at at nearly 5oz it is relatively heavy considering what it is made of. Attempting to switch this design over to steel thus results in an unhappily overweight ATR, since it wasn't designed with the properties of steel in mind. You would have the same problem if you tried to make a steel handled Military using the exact same design. The whole reason the Military design is what it is, is because it was designed with G10 in mind, and thus you have the long handle with wide scales while still hitting the desired weight target.

An an engineer you know that there are only a few ways to reduce weight:

1. reduce material (drill holes)
2. change material
3. change design

I spent some time drawing holes on a digital image of the ATR, and I think that #1 is the crudest thing we could do to the ATR design. The old discussion of using aluminum for the non-locking scale fits #2, but it was felt that the market might reject a hybrid (taking into account the target audience of a price-point model).

Logically then, my suggestion comes to #3, change the design for the steel model. Instead of alchemically transforming the Ti ATR design into SS, and having to fix the weight problem afterwards, why not take the ATR blade and develop a new (related) handle design for it in steel. Take a clean sheet of paper, decide your weight target, and while pursuing the same ATR concept, design a new handle optimized for the properties of steel. Perhaps you could use thinner scales due to steel's much greater strength, and perhaps a slimmer handle profile?

Thats my 20 Yen on the subject. <img src="wink.gif" width=15 height=15 align=middle>

Edited by - Carlos on 7/1/2001 9:38:40 AM

[thorin hammer]

What does everybody think about inserting carbon fiber cloth into the handle? Just the cloth not coated with anything. Does anyone know how long that would last?

Ehh, supposed to be Thorin... : )

[Carlos]

On the subject of grip-tape, I noticed on a current Ayoob thread in the MBC forum there is mention of finer-grit grip/anti-slip tape.

If there is in fact such tape with a grit fine enough to be used comfortably without gloves then that might offer an excellent solution for certain &quot;hard use&quot; applications, inlaid they same way you would inlay kraton, but with none of kraton's weaknesses. It might be worth looking into.

Thorin's idea of bonding a layer of CF cloth as an inlay might work similarly. I suppose you'd have to find a way to seal the edges of the piece of CF cloth to eliminate the possibility of splinters.

Edited by - Carlos on 7/5/2001 2:19:52 AM