Got a new 12" Ontario Machete today and I want to improve or replace the handles. Not sure why but handles have always been the most daunting aspect of making a knife and probably are a large part of why I'm never really tackled it. Well for the Machete, I wanted to start by flushing the plastic to the tang. I started with the back of the handle and that went fine, but the front has proven a bit more difficult. Any tips on not ending up with cube shaped handles? Should I just flatten the handles until they are flush and the use the slack part of the belt to round the where my fingers/knuckles would go? I'm using a harbor freight 1x30 but can file/sand by hand.
Use a relatively fine belt so that it melts the plastic off more than abrades it. Then just use the belt on the front until you're down to the metal and contour from there. You WILL still have pretty cube-shaped handles with those because the material is so thick and the grip so narrow, but you can vastly improve the comfort by flushing the scales and then re-countouring with a nice radius on them. Be careful going around the front of the "tail" rivet. The space between the tang and the edge of the rivet heads is very narrow, so if you're at a slant you'll cut through the "wall" of the scales around the recess.
Yup! The middle third (not in the transition into the fingers region of the grip, nor the side opposite that on the back) is the thin area to look out for. Just take it slow and careful and you'll see what I mean. You'll keep taking off plastic but still not hitting the steel.
A cabinet scraper works well to remove any little ridges from the sanding process and a light fanning with a hand torch will "re-glaze" the plastic so it's not all dusty looking. Just be careful you don't overdo it and cause it to bubble. The poly absorbs a small amount of ambient moisture from the air and so rapid heating can cause that water to vaporize and cause the bubbles. Other plastics like polycarbonate do the same thing, and have to be "pre-baked" before doing things like thermoforming operations to prevent bubbles.
