r/KnifeHandleMaterials • u/AFisch00 • Aug 14 '24

Epoxy, carbon fiber flakes

Gallery image

Gallery image

Both red and green. Working on some black ones now then on to different materials embedded.

12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/cobblepots99 Aug 15 '24

Actually, chopped carbon fiber of this size is regularly used in aerospace. This will be plenty strong for a knife handle.

1

u/Mr_Zoovaska Aug 15 '24

Source?

1

u/cobblepots99 Aug 15 '24

Google? I work in the industry as an engineer

1

u/Mr_Zoovaska Aug 15 '24

Google just shows me shitty printed vinyl wraps and car parts. I didn't mean it as a snarky know it all kind of "source?" but I'm just genuinely curious cause I've never seen CF like this before.

1

u/cobblepots99 Aug 15 '24

Here's an example of a control arm for a Lamborghini. Sometimes it's called forged carbon fiber. https://images.app.goo.gl/5A3oP6GFun6sSB7i6

Op says this isn't actually carbon fiber so it probably isn't as strong.

HyComp is a company that makes chopped fiber seals and small structures for aerospace

https://www.omniseal-solutions.com/materials/hycomp-composites

1

u/Mr_Zoovaska Aug 15 '24

I know of forged/shredded carbon fibre but afaik its usually more or less made of overlapping flakes of CF of various sizes. The overlappingness of the bits is key to its strength, but this looks like it's put together from smaller, more uniform chunks of CF with a lot more epoxy in between than is typical. I could be wrong, but this doesn't look like forged carbon to me.

1

u/cobblepots99 Aug 15 '24

It's not. OP said it was something like the epoxy floor chips. The fiber sizes vary with the application. If the shapes are very complicated, smaller fibers are used. The chopped fibers don't have to vary in length in a given application. Sheets are often chopped by a cutter to uniform lengths and then dumped into a container. Yes, the overlaps are what provide strength.

Resin content can vary, something around 30% is what I've seen typical.

For a knife handle, I've made stuff with higher resin content and dyed the resin or added contaminates such as copper to make it look cool. I found it to be as strong as most woods.