Just a trick I found the other day. If you're working in man made materials this won't concern you.
But if you collect some knife handle materials from the forest, the material can have hidden imperfections.
If the scales are on and it's all glued up and sanded close to tolerance - then you discover a hidden blemish which gets uncovered like a shake or pocket in the wood, you have some options.
There are a lot of fillers on the market but I couldn't find what I was looking for.
So I mixed superglue with the very fine powder wood dust from the sanding and made a filler. Apply it to the blemish slightly proud of the surface. Leave it a minute or two then compact it down further. Leave overnight then sand as normal.
The filler will dry a dark colour and the reason this worked for me is the scales were very contrasty in their grain pattern, so the repair blended perfectly with this type of wood.
If in doubt do a test piece on scrap first and check.
If you're handy with a sharp chisel, another method is to chop out the blemish and add a piece of the same wood then glue and sand, taking care to match the grain and colour.
This might avoid sanding the blemish out and going outside your size/shape tolerance.
Hope these ideas might be useful to someone.
But if you collect some knife handle materials from the forest, the material can have hidden imperfections.
If the scales are on and it's all glued up and sanded close to tolerance - then you discover a hidden blemish which gets uncovered like a shake or pocket in the wood, you have some options.
There are a lot of fillers on the market but I couldn't find what I was looking for.
So I mixed superglue with the very fine powder wood dust from the sanding and made a filler. Apply it to the blemish slightly proud of the surface. Leave it a minute or two then compact it down further. Leave overnight then sand as normal.
The filler will dry a dark colour and the reason this worked for me is the scales were very contrasty in their grain pattern, so the repair blended perfectly with this type of wood.
If in doubt do a test piece on scrap first and check.
If you're handy with a sharp chisel, another method is to chop out the blemish and add a piece of the same wood then glue and sand, taking care to match the grain and colour.
This might avoid sanding the blemish out and going outside your size/shape tolerance.
Hope these ideas might be useful to someone.
