Repairing Your Sword Grip - Epoxy Soaked Cord Wrap

[@ChristovTenn]

THANK YOU. Your instructional video was very helpful. A cutler in our study group replaced the horrible guard and pommel on my thirdhand Hanwei Rhinelander bastard sword and I finished it with a cord wrap. Came out pretty well. Not as nicely done as your feder, but good enough for my uses.

[@LaurentsOfEldern]

Excellent, thanks for the tutorial and links to materials!

[@felldir]

Excellent tutorial. Looks great. Maybe if you twisted the riser cord it might look a lot better?

[@Tacklebox3000]

I’ll have to do this on my next project sword

[@richstone2627]

Nice job but ain't nobody got time for that LOL. I'd just glue some scrap leather on the grip. Your cord job looks great and if I ever want to go this route I'll reference your excellent video. Thank you.

[@isolated-ghost6162]

This was a wonderful vide!o I enjoyed watching it a lot! I was wondering if you know how to clean a cord wrap without doing too much damage to the adhesive?

[@youngstownhf]

The epoxy is fairly resistant to most things, with the exception of probably very long soaking in strong solvents. If the epoxy/cord gets dirty, a little scrub with soap and water and something like maybe a magic eraser wouldn't hurt it at all.

[@joejoelesh1197]

Fake news! That is WAY too organized to be a shop. :-) Great video. I'm going to try rehabbing some club feders with this technique.

[@youngstownhf]

100% not what my shop looks like most of the time. I made a deliberate effort to clear the bench that would be in shot

[@TheRockofEasyCo]

I’m curious as to your opinion on Kevlar cord? Do you think it won’t absorb well enough? I’m also curious as to why you needed to re-wrap that one sword that you did this process with? Was it a mistake or just wear?

[@youngstownhf]

Kevlar (and most aramid fibers) are nasty to work with. Almost as bad as carbon fiber. Additionally, it's way past overkill. The structure of the wrap comes from the epoxy, not really the fiber itself, the fiber just provides a structure for the epoxy to fill and resolves some of the brittleness issues with pure epoxy as cast (or poured). I've redone a handful because of looks, and removed some just for testing how resilient the material is. Done correctly, it shrugs off wear pretty handily. If you have a substrate (wood, etc) that is soft and dents easily, then it can be problematic, as the cord/epoxy combo is not very flexible, and will "blister" when the substrate takes a big dent. Lotta the swords coming from europe (sigi, Regenyei, etc) use REALLY soft hardwoods, probably akin to what we have here as poplar. It's soft enough to dent with a fingernail. I prefer Ash or Hickory for core material (both are very impact resistant, straight grained hardwoods with good stability)

[@rideoutjacob]

What did you use for your risers?

[@youngstownhf]

The risers were an experiment, using a thinner cord wrapped ontop of the base wrap. It holds up well, but doesn't look great IMO. The last few wraps, I've used thin strips of leather under the wrap, and it's worked much better

[@Dogemanguy27]

Will this work with twill ribbon?

[@robertbeier5521]

Im gonna guess probably yes, but again, it might not stand up as well in the long term compared to cord in terms of impact resistance and tearing. It will still darken so choose your colours wisely, and test them with water first to see the colour difference. Orange would probably end up red and light blue into dark navy blue for example.

[@jonathanwienke512]

The starter channel should have been incorporated into the 3D print instead of being carved in after the fact.