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Old 12-29-2009, 11:07 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Decatur, IL
Posts: 2,612
David, were really not as far apart in our opinion as it seems. As I stated before, if I wanted to stabilize something like bone, antler, or ivory I would send it out to one of the two afore mentioned shops. My favorite method of home "stabilizing" wood with Linseed oil only works for solid hardwoods. It is more of sealing the wood all the way through but it will not harden spalted or soft woods well enough to use as handles. My feeling about Nelsonite is that it does the same thing as the Linseed oil treatment will do but at a much higher cost plus it takes for ever for Nesonite treated would to fume out; the Linseed oil will cure much faster.

My feeling is also that stabilization boarders on being the gemic of the day. Some woods are extremely stable as they come from the wood supplier. On the other hand other woods must be stabilized to be useful as knife handles. If I were to make handle out of ivory it would deffinantly go out for stabilzation. One, the material is far too expensive to use anything but tried and true methods.
Second, nasty things can happen to unstabilized ivory if mistreated, like accidentally leaving on the rear window shelf exposed to the sun on a hot day. Stabilization has it's place but it is frequently being over sold and I think that there are a lot of new newbies out there who think that this comes under the must do list.

You say that home stabilization is foolishly expensive and of poor quality. The same can be said of making wootz or tomahagane. It is also expensive and has a fairly high failure rate to try to make a product that is inferior to to modern steels. People do for the satisfaction of doing it themselves, not because it is cheaper or even makes sense.

As far as knife making being an art, I always looked on it as being an obcession.

Doug Lester


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