My Brother called me last night and asked me to start putting aside some piles of different bark samples for him. He is a big time salmon/trout fisherman up on Lake Ontario and has been building custom fishing rods since he was in High School. Apparently, the supply/price of cord has sky rocketed over the past few years. There is supposedly no good "old growth" cork left, and the new growth stuff is very expensive and of inferior quality. He normally buys "rings" of cork and glues them up to form the handles. Apparently, folks have started making handles out of bark "rings" as an alternative light weight material. Check out these Birch bark handles: http://www.slideshare.net/mhackney/birch-bark-grips I see it is also being used for Knife handles too: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...bark-handle-reconditioning-for-Russian-knives Hey StillHead, better start stripping that birch bark off those punky rounds of yours! My Brother, me (with the fish) and Dad on the lake a few years ago.
That knife handle does look pretty sharp. I suggested to him that we try some other things besides birch (I don't have any) and if others work well you could end up with some really nice patterns with varying thickness and color by species.
I am going to have to show this to Dad, it's right up his alley. Almost looks like there are making strips of the bark for the knife?
Yeah, it all looks pretty simple really. Wash the bark, flatten it out and allow to dry, cut circular disks with hole saw (for fishing rods), sand disks, glue together, sand/stain/seal. For knives you would have to cut ovals or such to match the profile of the handle, you could just cut rectangles and sand off the excess.
Hey does your brother live in southeastern Ohio? He looks so much like someone I know it's creepy...... Awesome fish by the way and that seems like a great use of bark.
No, we're from Grand Island, NY (in the middle of the Niagara, just above the falls). I moved to NE Ohio in "77". He still lives up there in Niagara Falls. My Dad and him chartered on Ontario and the lower Niagara for many years. He just fishes for the fun of it now.
