Non-Chemical removing sterling silver handles from knives

[flyfisherman]

Hi guys!Got myself one of those butter knives with sterling silver handles.What would be easiest way to remove handle?

 

[butcher]

I usually heat the handle wth a torch, some are soldered, a hammer also helps to split halves or loosen blade, not all are made the same.

Use what tool you have to just be destructive with it. :lol:

 

[nickvc]

Mind your fingers when removing the silver if its a filled handle which most are as it's usually very thin and extremely sharp... I know been there done that many times!

 

[flyfisherman]

Thank you guys for advices.Looks like i need to go medieval on tnis knife. :evil:

 

[qst42know]

Score a line along the seam with a box knife before you start hitting it. It will almost always burst at the score line unless the material is exceptionally thick.

 

[element47.5]

IMO the best approach is to give it a good whack or two with a hammer upon an anvil or other "smashing" surface, crosswise, eg; transverse to the seam. Sometimes, the blade and tang will pull out with some back-and-forth effort. Hold the blade NOT with your hands, but with a pair of pliers...so as not to injure your hand or fingers. Wear gloves and safety goggles----these things have a way of at least bruising your fingers when you pound on them, holding them only with your hands/fingers.

The one thing I do NOT recommend is to heat the handle, that is, without whacking it enough to create a visible hole = gas vent near the non-blade end. Some knives have a powdery clay-cement type of filler. Those are no problem. Some have a resinous filler. I have had handles explode under heat and blow the blade out forcefully. Now, it's not a .357 magnum or anything like it, but it WILL spew out the hot, melted resin, and ruin your clothes or give a pretty narly burn if it lands on your skin. Or at minimum, it will make a nice splatter mark on concrete or your workbench, and maybe that's no big deal. But it will burn your skin pretty good and the explosion will surprise you. So, I recommend somehow opening up some kind of vent on the non-blade end of the knife, either by crushing it with hammer blows, or driving the tip of a nail into it and piercing the thin sterling exoskeleton. If you're using a torch on these, wear goggles, it's just common sense. A propane torch is plenty. After the blade pops out, you probably want to keep heating the empty handle so that as much resin burns off as possible.

The point being, if you do 50 of these things, one or more (and you never know in advance unless you have already done that particular style/mfr) is going to have the resin holding in the blade. One of them, you overheat it and it will burst on you. Avoid, if possible.

 

[goldsilverpro]

I guy I worked for just filled a large crucible with them and heated them in a gas fired furnace at a low heat below the melting point of sterling. After awhile, he dumped them, let them cool, and, using gloves, easily pulled them apart.

 

[flyfisherman]

Thank you all again. A Knife was no match to a good old hammer and pliers. I hit it with the hammer all over the handle's length to loosen the blade,pulled it free and cut along the seam with pliers.Inside was a some kind of sticky substance. Anyway, the silver shell weighed 30.5 g on my scale, not bad for paying only 25 cents at the second-hand store.

 

[element47.5]

30.5 gms is an exCEPtionally heavy handle...most all that I have encountered are between 16 and 22 grams; average I would guess is 18 gms---people generally figure them as half an ounce of sterling. You did good! Now you can spend hours and hours and hours looking for the next one. Just kidding, no, I'm not! I used to like traipsing thru junkstores & yard sales and I can appreciate that. Now, it rarely appeals to me...but that could be because I am selling the home my folks lived in for 30 years and I have made 7 trips to the dump and hired two $300 loads of laborers and heavy truck to haul away complete and total crud that could be bought, new, for maybe $500 including delivery via chauffered limousine.

I guess you could call it an anti-accumulation bias on my part.

 

[flyfisherman]

I almost did not buy this knife.It looked like one of the silver-plated ones(which is all i could find in local thrift stores),but i decided to give a handle closer look and sure enough ,it said Sterling Handle .To bad there was only one in the flatware bins.

 

[JDmead]

Over the last year and a half, I'd say I've cracked open about 10-12,000 knife handles. The fastest method that I've come across, is to take the butt of the knife handle, place it in a vice about 1" deep, yank it back and forth to split it on one side. Do NOT to tear off the whole end. Take a hammer and give that butt end a few whacks to clean it out. Once that is cleaned out, you can give it a little twist and toss it in your bucket, then, while wearing gloves and holding onto the blade (most of the knives are just butter knives after all) start to hammer along the shaft of the handle. The reason you pop open the butt of the knife is to give the filler a place to go. With a couple of good solid hits the blade will loosen. Pull it, and as much of the tang that is left, out, toss it into another bucket to be taken to the scrap yards, and finish clearing out the handle until you can see clearly through it and there is no resin left inside. I've gotten it down now to where I can get through a knife handle per minute.

We keep plastic sheeting up around the work area to keep the dust a debris to a minimum in the rest of the shop. Also, a dust mask, gloves and safety glasses are a must.


The leaded ones are a breeze, but I find them to be a small percentage of the knife handles I've done. Maybe 75-100 out of every 1000 knives. Those, you just take the knife and hang it with the blade downward over a bucket. It's best to have a little of the dust from the other knife handles in the bottom of it to keep the molten lead from burning the plastic bucket. Take a hand held propane torch and heat right at the seam between handle and blade. You'll start to see a little bit of bubbling occur, at which point, take a pair of pliers and give the blade a twist until it slides out with ease. Continue to heat until you no longer see anything flowing out of the handle.

Be sure to wear gloves, jeans and long sleeves as well as safety glasses, as on a rare occasion or two, the lead can start to shoot out just like water sprays when you have your thumb over the end of a hose. I've got a pair of jeans specifically set for when I do leaded knives, simply because of the splatter that lands on them.

 

[Lou]

Cheap powered rolling mill with the wire side works well.

 

[Digitaria]

The sticky stuff you mentioned, may have been a bitumen type adhesive. I rehafted an antique silver manicure set, where destruction was not an option for the handles. 10 minutes in boiling water, and the handle seemed to push itself off, while the bitumen oozed out and hardened as it cooled.