Mammoth tooth

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Christian Trajkovski

Scaniansteel
Joined
Oct 10, 2018
Messages
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Location
Sweden
Hello!

I’m thinking about using mammoth tooth as a handle material for the first time next week. Do any of you have any tips?

When I check the interwebs it seems that it can crumble quite easily.

It will be a small pairing knife in Damasteel with full tang.
 
I bought my piece stabilized but that isn’t always an guarantee. I have worked with some stabilized burls with voids in them and I suspect that it can be the same with this material.
 
The tooth
67AAB527-FCEE-455A-B72F-DDCC153225C1.jpeg
 
dentist stuff... special expensive diamond high speed drills, put all your abrasives right in the trash... it will still crack... I think most who use these use lots and lots of superglue. super hard and fragile. have fun.
 
Well looks like a got an intersting time ahead of me next week :)

I’ll update when I begin work probably not until late next week. It will either turn out fantastic or be a total disaster....

If total disaster strikes I’ll just have to use these instead.
FA424B69-1EF7-4CB1-861D-649D2BCBBA73.jpeg
 
Did some polishing and etching on the blade this afternoon. So we are slowly nearing the glue up...

Before etch
4BE2EE33-AE68-4A8A-9ABD-539B1B23D559.jpeg
 
Blunted two drills on the mammoth and all my carbide drills are the wrong size . I’ll have to make a trip to the hardware store tomorrow before I can continue...

1B2890DA-E6E9-4B67-A2DA-583FCBD2601E.jpeg
 
Went to work on the handles today, and it was a LOT more work compared to ”normal” handle materials. But I think that the end result was worth all the extra job, but I will probably not put mammoth on the next knife that I make ;-)

55BFFCF8-42A9-44E7-A350-245B06E4D354.jpeg
074C06C7-4284-4C2A-B01E-30DBC38B8AFB.jpeg
 
Went to work on the handles today, and it was a LOT more work compared to ”normal” handle materials. But I think that the end result was worth all the extra job, but I will probably not put mammoth on the next knife that I make ;-)

View attachment 44281 View attachment 44282
Looking good! :)
Recently purchased a gyuto with mammoth handle and although it looks pretty good, I find it a bit heavy. Is the weight an issue or doesn't it matter with a petty?
 
Looking good! :)
Recently purchased a gyuto with mammoth handle and although it looks pretty good, I find it a bit heavy. Is the weight an issue or doesn't it matter with a petty?


Well I could think that the handle on a gyuto in mammoth tooth would be rather heavy. But the handle is rather slim on this one and the blade is rather large ( the spine is 3,5mm) so I do not feel that it’s an issue... at least not yet :).

I’ll find a picture of the spine an post, I’m guessing that the gyuto handle is rather wide?
 
Well I could think that the handle on a gyuto in mammoth tooth would be rather heavy. But the handle is rather slim on this one and the blade is rather large ( the spine is 3,5mm) so I do not feel that it’s an issue... at least not yet :).

I’ll find a picture of the spine an post, I’m guessing that the gyuto handle is rather wide?
Knife not at hand but it is on the wide side - and it's full tang. I know that the standard weight for the 240mm is 232g. With the mammoth tooth rehandle it comes in at a whopping 328g!
 
Well it sounds like the tooth would alter the balance of the knife significantly compared to the normal wood handle
 
Looks stunning! Maybe a silly question but why don't you just resharpen your drills. Takes me 5 minutes tops and knife making wise you are miles ahead of me so.......
 
Well the drills were not anything special (read cheap) so they went into the recycling when the cutting faces got destroyed.

The main problem was that the drill got maybe one or two mm down into the tooth before it gave up so I would have had to resharpen them almost an infinite amount of times before the three holes on each tang were done.

When I used tungsten carbide tools it just went through the tooth like butter compared to the standard drills.
 
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