Some knife work

The file knife is for my daughter. She killed her first deer last year. I want to surprise her with a new knife for this hunting season. I told her I was making something for her and wanted to know if there were any colors that she wanted me to use. She said purple and black. I couldn't find any purple and black knife scales that I liked so I tried to make some fiberglass micarta with dyed burlap.

I bought some white burlap and RIT dye for $3 each.




The colors turned out pretty good after a 30 minute soak in the dye. I picked up a can of Fiberglass resin from lowes for $15.




I mixed the resin with slightly over half of the recommended amount of hardener. That gave me more working time before it set up. I put a layer of resin down on wax paper and then put a strip of burlap on it. I kept putting down more resin and alternating colors of burlap.




I made a jig for pressing it down. It has spacers between two aluminum plates so it makes an even thickness when its tightened down. It squeezed a lot of excess resin out.




I was going to let it dry until my next day off but it seemed to harden up pretty fast. I set it out in the sun so that probably helped. It took a while to get the two plates apart. The resin had set up on the threads. Next time I'm going to spray the jig down with non stick cooking spray.




I trimmed up the edges and peeled the wax paper off. It looks good so far. I have a 2.5" x 12" flat piece ready to use. It set up very solid and hard.




I don't know how well the purple will show up on the inside once is shaped and sanded. I rounded off one corner to see what it looks like. I can see the purple layers but the black is more prominent. Maybe I should have used 2 layers of purple for every one layer of black.