Steve,
Thanks, that makes complete sense to me now
. I understand the extra effort, but IMHO it was worth it to have at least one to show off
D
I made one knife from a file when I was a teenager with my dad's help (annealed it, ground off the ridges, forged the shape and then retempered it). It was the best sheath knife I've ever had - used it once to skin a whole cow and it was as sharp at the end as it was at the beginning. Fell out of the sheath I had for it while I was out riding and couldn't find it again. Tried a few other ones but kept messing up the temper... I have plenty of old files though so should try again with just grinding (I don't have a forge anymore anyway) and maybe back the temper off in the oven if it ends up to prone to chipping. Not much to loose except some time
I've been using epoxy for most of my wood to metal need's, which generally works pretty well (system three quick cure "5 minute" although it's really 24 hours to full cute). I don't use a whole lot, so mostly it's a way to use it up before it gets to be to many years old..
I believe your right about gorilla glue being a type of polyurethane, although my limited experience is that it can be a bit more brittle than some of the other ones (especially if there are any gaps it foams into). I haven't used durathane, so can't compare to that, but some of the construction adhesives are in a similar class of product but less foam and less brittle (but maybe a bit more creep in some cases). I could see where something with aa (very) tiny bit of flex might have some advantages for knife scales.
On my rather long to-do list is a set of steak knives and accompanying roast carving knife/fork. For those I was planning to do the poured pewter bolster and butt cap like shown here
http://primalfires.yuku.com/topic/1941/Poured-pewter-fittings and here
http://joeldelorme.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-make-pewter-bolster-on-knife.html?m=1 (I actually got the idea from a post on the old-tools forum which I'm not finding at the moment). Lead free pewter is readily available now probably something like the Britannia metal here
http://www.rotometals.com/mobile/Category.aspx?id=23 is what I'll end up with. I may have to buy the steak knife blade blanks although it pains me to do so