EASY HOMEMADE MICARTA FOR KNIVES AND OTHER PROJECTS

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Today's video is going to be all about Micarta and how you can make it yourself. It's a lot of fun and I'm going to show you how I do it coming right up.

[00:00:17]>> [music] [music] [music] [singing] >> Hello everybody and thanks for coming back for another video. This is Dave and I'm glad you're with me. Join me out here in the shop today while we make some Micarta in today's episode.

[00:00:47]So Micarta, if you're not familiar with it, um it's a great material to use for knife handles. It was originally made in 1910 by George Westinghouse and it was originally used for industrial electrical applications because it has a good insulated properties. But since then, Micarta's of all different types have been used for a variety of different things and crafts and particularly knife handles. Now, traditionally, Micarta is made using a phenolic resin under high heat and high pressure. This is actually store-bought Micarta right here.

[00:01:22]You can make a good quality Micarta yourself at home that's going to last for years and years and years, hold up really well, and for all practical purposes, it can be just as durable and just as good as the store-bought stuff. It starts off with a resin. And there's a wide variety of resins available on the market.

[00:01:43]You can get fiberglass laminating resin, you can get epoxy resins. There's a whole slew of different kinds, different drying times depending on where you live in the world and what your temperatures are like and your The and all that is a factor in how quick it's going to set up and cure. But, in my area where we have a lot of heat and humidity, uh ideally, you want to do your laminating in 70 to 77° weather, something like that, with relatively low humidity. Most of the time of the year, I have to do mine inside in the air conditioning because it's just way too hot, and the resin will set up a lot faster than I want it to. One word of caution, if you do use epoxy resin, you want to get the type that has UV protection in it. That's That's more UV resistant.

[00:02:32]Uh especially if you're going to use this for knife handles and your knives are going to be out in the sunshine.

[00:02:37]Otherwise, epoxy resin will turn like a milky color, and it will no longer be translucent if it's the type of epoxy resin that doesn't have any UV inhibitors built into it. It will get milky on you out in the sun. Trust me, all of my years working on boats, I know that for a fact. Now, once you've got your resin, of course, you're going to need a mold of some kind.

[00:03:01]You could use two pieces of plywood and just clamp them together. You could make a little box like I'm going to show you here that I made. And then, you want to use some type of a material, and the two most common are any type of a linen or a material that's going to absorb. You want a material that's going to absorb the resin.

[00:03:20]Or, you can use paper. Paper base is another type of micarta.

[00:03:24]I pulled out some examples to show you.

[00:03:27]Uh this one here, I made with a linen base micarta. Right here.

[00:03:34]And then, this knife here, I showed it before, I made years ago. This one is made with a paper base micarta.

[00:03:40]It pitted on me a little bit. It's high-carbon steel. But, uh that's That This is paper base micarta, and it's ivory colored, and you can see the paper base micarta take on a really nice patina over time.

[00:03:52]Uh it didn't look like this when I first made it. It was a lot wider looking than this. Uh but just the oils from your hands and handling and everything, it has a really nice feel.

[00:04:02]But that's something to be aware of if you want to make paper-based Micarta.

[00:04:06]But yeah, you can just simply cut a bunch of pieces of colored paper, white paper, or any kind of material that you like. Like I said, just make sure your material you pick out is absorbent and it it will soak up the resin.

[00:04:19]Here is another uh I guess you could call this a Micarta that I made uh quite a while ago. I made this.

[00:04:26]And what it is is uh cedars it's cedar chips, cedar sawdust from my joiner. I was joining a bunch of uh cedar and I was giving the the cedar away uh for somebody that had guinea pigs.

[00:04:40]But uh I had quite a bit of it, so I decided just mix up and in this case I used fiberglass laminating resin.

[00:04:47]And I just mixed the uh sawdust with that uh to make this. So, it's another option.

[00:04:54]So, you may ask why would you want to make your own Micarta?

[00:04:58]Well, Micarta comes in a wide variety of different uh colors and that type of thing, but not every single color. So, you may want a particular shade of uh red or orange or purple or blue or green or whatever and you just can't find it. You know, you're limited to what what they're producing and they're going to produce what sells the most. So, if you if you like to make things like I do and you're into customization, you can make it however you want it to look. And that's one of the big advantages, but probably the biggest advantage is it's a lot cheaper to make it yourself.

[00:05:31]So, I looked around at the current prices on Micarta handle scales. We're talking your typical handle scale slabs that may be like a quarter or 3/8 thick, inch and a half wide, 5-6 inches long.

[00:05:44]And it seems like the average price right now is around $10 for a pair. You can go to a thrift store and you can buy a whole roll of material really cheap for just a few dollars.

[00:05:54]Cut it up yourself, use that to make the micarta. The biggest expense is going to be the resin you decide to use.

[00:06:01]Uh this is a two-part. Uh so and it was 30 around $30 for that. So it basically it works out to about a dollar a pair versus $10. And it's customized so it's made to look exactly like you want it to look for a dollar a pair.

[00:06:16]In my thumbnail I showed this knife here, this marlinspike knife.

[00:06:20]And I made this with some burlap micarta that I made. A lot of knife manufacturers are using burlap micarta now. So it's very popular nowadays. I found a whole bunch of this at a thrift store one time.

[00:06:33]It was probably about six or eight times more than this right here for just a couple of bucks. So we'll jump in right now. We'll go ahead and make a few batches of micarta. And then afterwards I'll give you a few more tips that things I've learned in my experience making my own micarta. Okay.

[00:06:50]So here's my mold.

[00:06:52]And I made it out of just pine.

[00:06:55]And it's all screwed together so I can unscrew it.

[00:06:59]And then I lined the bottom with parchment paper.

[00:07:04]And then the sides I just used duct tape.

[00:07:08]And then I screwed it all together and then I put a little bead of glue around on the inside here, just craft glue.

[00:07:15]So hopefully it won't leak.

[00:07:21]And then my lid is right here and it's just another piece of pine with some parchment paper wrapped around it.

[00:07:31]And it fits down inside like that. On mine it is on the inside it's about 7 and 3/4 by about 6 and a quarter.

[00:07:46]And I made it to where when the lid is flush with the top right here, it's a half inch thick. I've got all these squares of material cut up. It comes with these measuring cups.

[00:07:58]And I'm kind of guessing about maybe 320 ml is what I'm going to use. So, that's what I'm going to mix. I'm going to do 160 of each part in these cups. And then I'm just going to mix it up real good with this chopstick right here.

[00:08:19]This is the first time using this mold, so I'm just guessing at how much I need.

[00:08:44]And I believe we've got about 30 minutes of work time on this, so no big rush.

[00:08:49]I cut some little pieces of plastic here that I'm going to use as spreaders.

[00:09:05]Put another layer in.

[00:09:15]It's a messy job. There's no way around that.

[00:09:23]There's three layers. There's four.

[00:09:29]There's five.

[00:09:31]Six.

[00:09:33]Seven.

[00:09:37]And eight.

[00:09:40]We have enough for 10 layers, maybe.

[00:09:42]There's nine.

[00:09:44]And there's 10.

[00:09:51]Just depress it.

[00:09:55]Right now it's right about at a half an inch.

[00:09:58]I'm going to use four clamps, one on each corner.

[00:10:18]Okay, let's see how our micarta turned out.

[00:10:35]It came off easily.

[00:11:04]Okay, let's make another batch.

[00:11:06]I've got my uh epoxy resin mixed up pretty good here.

[00:11:12]In this one I'm going to go with a kind of a burnt orange material, I guess you could call it. And I'm going to add some of this epoxy colorant.

[00:11:22]And uh I think I'm going to use orange.

[00:11:25]I'm going to use some of this orange color.

[00:11:42]>> Kind of makes a translucent orange.

[00:11:46]I'm just going to go with that. Mix it real good.

[00:11:55]And I mixed up What did I do? 240 ml this time.

[00:12:01]Little bit less than the last batch.

[00:12:11]Stir it around. Make sure it all gets coated good.

[00:12:19]There's two. I'm going to continue getting all these layers in. And I'll be right back.

[00:12:25]Okay, I've got 13 layers of material in there.

[00:12:29]All saturated.

[00:12:30]I got a fresh piece of parchment paper covering my lid here.

[00:12:50]Okay, let's see how this batch turned out.

[00:13:15]And we've got a little wrinkle right there.

[00:13:20]Some tiny little air bubbles.

[00:13:23]But I think it'll be all right. This next batch and this will be the last batch I show on camera. I'm going to do burlap, and I'm going to add a little bit of coffee epoxy resin colorants to it.

[00:13:35]Let me shake it up first.

[00:13:45]And I'll see what that looks like.

[00:13:48]I still want it to be translucent.

[00:13:59]I wouldn't call that coffee colored, but that's all right.

[00:14:30]Okay, and then I'm going to lay a piece of parchment paper on top of that layer.

[00:14:40]I'm making these thinner, cuz I'm going to use these for pocket knife scales.

[00:15:03]On goes our bed, our press.

[00:15:10]Let's use some blocks of wood this time.

[00:15:11]Do it smart.

[00:15:13]Okay, this is the burlap micarta batch.

[00:15:37]>> [music] >> All right, folks. And as you can see, it's really easy and it's a lot of fun to make.

[00:16:17]Uh few tips that I can give you is uh you can use wax paper or parchment paper. I found that parchment paper works a little bit better. It doesn't tend to stick to it too much.

[00:16:29]On my mold, I've reused it a number of times now and I've had to replace the part parchment paper maybe twice out of maybe eight or 10 batches, but it only takes a few minutes to do that.

[00:16:41]And uh so it works really well. And then duct tape on the sides of my mold, you saw I used duct tape, and that works perfectly. I haven't had to change that at all. It doesn't stick to it. And since you're trimming off all the edges anyway, it doesn't matter if it had a little texture or wrinkles or anything like that on the sides because that's all getting trimmed off later. You definitely want to use rubber gloves if you're for whatever reason adamant about wearing rubber gloves, uh just have some acetone on hand and the acetone will clean the resin off your hands. But it's probably not the best for your skin. I've done it before, but uh you don't want to make a habit out of it. And here's some examples.

[00:17:18]I've got this kind of a black looking micarta.

[00:17:23]And here's the burlap micarta that I made that I used on this knife with that bigger weave. And then also I made some with a tighter weave and I made this nice and thin for pocket knife scales. I've got a couple of those.

[00:17:38]If if you're doing thin ones, you can put parchment paper in in between the layers. Once you get however many layers of of material down you want, put a piece of parchment paper and then start doing some more and that'll save you a whole lot of time, especially if you have a slow drying resin.

[00:17:56]Mine I let cure overnight. It kind of sets up in about 8 hours, but I just let it go overnight and that way I know it's plenty cured.

[00:18:06]And then you can just peel these pry that take a sharp blade and you can pry these apart and the parchment paper keeps them separated perfectly.

[00:18:17]Here's some paper based micartas that I made with colored paper.

[00:18:23]And I made these thin also for pocket knife scales. Orange and yellow paper that I used.

[00:18:33]And then here's a green I made with a green material.

[00:18:37]And here's a red I made with some red material.

[00:18:42]So if you work with crafts or knives, that type of thing, anything you might consider using micarta for, I hope you give it a try. Like I said, it's a lot of fun.

[00:18:53]It's not hard to do. It's kind of therapeutic in a way.

[00:18:57]Putting those layers down and and spreading them. Just make sure each layer is saturated really well with the resin before you put the next one on.

[00:19:06]And then you want to either weight it down with concrete blocks or you know, clamps like I did or something like that to try and squeeze all that air out. If you like today's video, please give me a like. I really appreciate it. And if you're not subscribed, please subscribe to my channel. Hit the notification bell and that way you won't miss my next video. I thank everybody for watching. I hope you're having a great day. This is Dave.

[00:19:29]See you in the next one.

[00:19:35]>> [music] [music]