How to make your AITOR OSO BLANCO OLIVE WOOD HANDLE Better.

Firstly I have to say the steel AITOR  is using is good! After lots of tough outdoor treatment to be excellent and has really held an edge! with no noticeable damage to it's edge.

However, the problem with the above knife is this:

On this model Aitor is using a natural wood handle made from Olive Wood, which is a very nice hardwood and strong.
The hole profile for the tang is circular and the tang is rectangular. You see my point?

Now the only thing which stops the handle twisting around the tang is that the guard end of the handle is asymmetric and resists a twisting motion against the guard as long as there is adequate pressure against the pommel by the pommel bolt.
This is absolutely fine however I did notice a very slight handle movement. I could really clamp down that bolt.

But there is always a danger to damage the natural olive wood. I know what your saying Olive wood is very good at withstanding compressive forces and these are compressive forces against the end grain too. If the handle was to be really well designed a rectangular inner profile would be there and you could do this with a handle made from Forprene or the like from an injection molded method.

So I decided to fill the space with a mixture of waterproof epoxy resin and chopped natural cotton strands.(I chopped it up with scissors 

This Epoxy has a Shore D hardness when fully cured (over 24 hours at 23C) of approximately 80+_ 2 

The epoxy will bond to the inner surface of the wood, with some penetration/infiltration into the wood itself and the cotton will form a kind of poor mans "micarta" and help strengthen the epoxy filler.

Don't freak out about the size of the tang, my Ontario Spec plus tang is similar 

and after 20 plus years of heavy field work is still in one piece! Also my FKMD with a similar sized tang after >3 years abuse. See levering test of this Aitor Oso Blanco in the upcoming field test video.

In order to do this properly I had to protect the threaded end of the tang with some foil as i didn't want to get epoxy over the thread. It was 20 minute set stuff and waterproof.

I would have preferred to see a better job done at this end with the 5MM thread, although no great forces under normal use would be seen here.

I have to say the Aitor OSO BLANCO is a very well balanced knife.


More to come and stat tuned for upcoming field test results and review.



Ok now that the initial resin has set, ie greater than 24 hours has elapsed, I filled the remaining space to the DISTANCE OF WHERE THE SECURING POMMEL BOLT EXTENDS. If you choose to do this you must protect the threads of the tang with something like I used in this second part, ie PVC tubing. Measure correctly the distance required of tubing so as to properly protect the threads and add about 3-4mm max of extra for any "slackness" that may occur over time. This will allow you to tighten the securing bolt further.

Once all the space has been filled with a high quality epoxy resin then it will be virtually impossible for the handle to move. Now that epoxy is against the tang, this will provide even forces against the tang, which could not have been present before. 

Update/11-10-2016

I have decided to totally fill the existing space within the handle with Epoxy resin. The only reason why i did this was that I figure I will never need to remove the handle. I mean why would I? i never done this on any of my knives, some more than 20 years in use!

Same procedure as above but minus the chopped cotton fibers.
PS the anchoring bolt IS NOT made from stainless steel.