And dang but i'm having a hard time finding my own pics as I just don't take that many, but will keep looking and post.

I like blades like the Becker/Kabar collabs that have removeable scales, it's just so hard to find micarta that I like that I finally had to start making my own.

Some factory blades with micarta they use so much freakin resin in it, that it feels like glass in your hand. Once in a while you find some pretty grippy stuff, I have an Ontario Ranger that came with pretty grippy micarta, albeit rough on the edges.

I tried a bunch of different materials, but have found denim is the best all-around for my taste, not as rough as burlap, but much grippier than linen or paper or other material.

I buy old blue jeans when they go on sale at secondhand stores. I use regular fiberglass resin, and weigh the stack down really good once I get everything gooped up and stacked.

It produces a finish that really feels like the texture of denim at the surface, in fact enough so that it will stain over time, but then you just wash it with a little soap and water and it cleans right back up. It's grippy even when wet, even when oily.

Curious if others do this, and what materials you use?

ETA: Bonus too for me, I have size XL hands, and I can make the scales much thicker to suit my grip.

I've made it a few times, but not as slabs. My survival knives have micarta wrapped while wet directly to the tang. I let it harden and then grind to shape. I use various fabrics and I've used bankline and hemp cordage. I wish I had access t my pictures, but photobucket is a scam and facebook is fucking me because I am the guy with no smartphone, so they see that as a security issue.(if anyone knows a free photohost, let me know)

I've made quite a bit over the years.  I use West System epoxy, but I did make the first few using fiberglass resin.  The fiberglass resin would start setting too quick, epoxy has a much longer pot time.  Walking through a craft store one time and saw a bunch of burlap in rolls 6" wide, all different colors.  Finished a knife recently with lime green burlap, came out awesome, reminds me of a dragonfly.  I've also used orange safety vest material on a little survival knife.

With the denim, try some alternating layers for contrast.  Two layers of light/faded and two layers dark, and keep stacking like that.  One-one is too fine a pattern, just kind of runs together, but 2-2 are thick enough layers that they come out looking great when contoured.

Can we get some pics??

https://imgdump5.novarata.net/

Most of mine I think are on the hard-drive of my desktop that's still boxed up from move, but had these on a thumb, BK-9, faded black denim that the resin faded even more to gray, with a few single layers of a bronze that matched the color of the lettering on the blade pretty well.

Nice!  I really was hoping to see what actual blue colored blue jean micarta grips would look like on a pistol or knife...

Thanks Dragynn.

Hemp wrapped micarta



Linen


Bank line.

I’ve done the same thing with denim. I worked exactly as you described but was damn messy to do. I’ve also used burlap and it also worked but aesthetically was not as good. I have a crate of felt in the garage of different colors I plan on experimenting with some day

Very nice! Rustic looking and from what i've read pretty accurate historically, I read about people back in the day doing this and using tree resin for the binder.

Have not tried felt, but have used fleece back in the day, not for knife scales but some custom fabrication and no weighted squeeze to get out excess, stuff turns out hard as nails, couldn't imagine it working too well for scales but I could be wrong.

Have also wondered about trying towel material, might give an interesting looking texture to 'em.

I got the felt in a bunch of bright colors. I’m sure it will darken when the resin hits it but I’ll see what happens. I’d thought about using red rags or old towels/sheets etc but I mainly use rosewood for scales. The whole mycarta experiment was to do something different and to meet a requirement for the Compositr Materials merit badge a few of my Scouts were working on

My first knife was layered blue jean pants material and cement from a fiberglass repair kit.  Layers squeezed slightly in a clamp but wrapped in wax paper.

Yep, got to use that wax paper.

But I weigh mine down pretty heavily for the clamp, 40 pounds or better of steel weights. Makes for a "drier" micarta where you can really feel the texture.

Got a knife from Buck that I just actually sold, but it had linen micarta and truthfully you could only tell it was micarta by looking at it closely, smooth and hard as a regular phenolic handle, kinda defeats the whole purpose of micarta IMO.

You sure it wasn’t a paper micarta and not linen? Many paper micartas just look like plastic.

Positive, as per Buck and from visual inspection, bought directly from Buck as a limited edition.

I mean it was a 119, not a full exposed tang kinda knife, so maybe a rougher grippy micarta might have looked funny on a fixy knife with bolsters.

This is an important point, if anyone is considering using fiberglass resin but doesn't have any experience with it, I STRONGLY recommend you mix up a very tiny batch just to get a good idea of what your working time is.

You can always adjust the mix a bit to compensate for temperature and working time, but there are downsides to that.

Best case scenario, you work it in 70 degree temp, low humidity, and follow the basic recipe as that gives the best results.

Too much hardener = dries too quick, and end product tends to be a little brittle
Not enough hardener = dries too slow, end product is a little soft. But this is still better than too much hardener for this small project.

Temp too hot = Dries way too fast, not enough time to do it right
Temp too cold = Takes forever to dry, but this is still better than too hot, at least you'll have a lot of working time

Get everything pre-cut, and then some, you will need more layers than what you think, better to have too many as you will be sanding to size anyway.

Be very careful when you go to drill holes in the micarta for the screws or pins, you only get one shot to do it right, drill press is waaay better than doing it by hand.

Okay, finally got out the box of lukarta and took some photos.  First up are some colored burlap that came out great.  Any knives you see in this post are knives that I also made.  (need to trim off 3/4" off the yellow piece, I've got bubbles!)
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Then some safety vest material for the orange and fluorescent yellow.  Because this is polyester and not cotton, it feels more "plasticky".  The natural fibers like cotton or jute or linen feel grippy.  The hot pink is some kind of faux felt I found at a craft store.  Color on all of these came out great, very much like the color pre-epoxy.
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Here's some "camo" burlap with alternating layers of forest green and tan.  Two layers of the same color and then two of the next give a better definition of the layers when you shape them.  Single layers will tend to blend together a little more and kind of look mottled, actually a little more "camo" because of them blending.
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Couple pics of stacks of a variety of colors and different layered combos.  First pic, the pieces are 5x6, so enough for two sets of most handles.  Second pic are 6x9 pieces, so can usually get three sets out of each.
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Next is something I tried more for grins.  I cut individual pieces of camo colors and stacked them.  I wanted it to be solid, so each layer I kind of shifted back and forth 1/8" so the cut lines would alternate a bit, kind of like a finger joint in woodworking.  The pattern is mirrored so when I cut the piece down the center, I had bookmatched pieces.  I started the stack with 3 or 4 layers of carbon fiber to give the scales extra strength and also a built in liner.  Made two sets, you can see the finished knife handle is darker than the rough scale set.
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Last is a piece of denim.  With cotton and linen, some colors finish out truer to original than others.  They will usually darken up a shade or two.  On lighter colors, that usually looks a little better, but dark colors will end up too dark, almost black.  Denim finishes out exactly like a pair of jeans.  Alternating darker and lighter denim makes it even look a little more "denimy".  
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I did most of these a few years ago (except for the bright colored burlap and safety vest).  I had a gallon of epoxy and a bunch of material remnants.  Also had a 20 ton press and a couple 1" thick pieces of aluminum plates.  

Don't use wax paper or butcher paper, use saran wrap (or stretch wrap used for shipping).  Saran wrap peels off easily, no scraping at all.  So I would stretch out a couple feet of saran wrap and tack down the corners with a small piece of painters tape so it stays flat.  In a flat tub I'd put in a piece of material and use a credit card to scrape a thin layer of epoxy on both sides, then place it on the saran wrap.  Keep doing this till you've got the number of layers you want.  Untack the saran wrap and fold it over, don't pull tight, leave the fold a little loose.  Press stick the plastic all around the bundle and then roll up the saran tight up to the bundle on each side.  You roll it up so it will keep the epoxy in, but can open up a little if needed so it won't pop.  Then I'd set it between the aluminum plates and squeeze the absolute shit out of it.

Squeezing it like I did has pros and cons.  Pros are I didn't use as much epoxy, and I've never found a void or bubble in those pieces.  They are tough, would have to run them over with a tank to break them.  Cons are that they are tough to finish out because they are drier (if that makes sense).  I usually finish the handle by rubbing on a coat of car wax.  I would literally have a 1" stack of layers and squeeze it down to 3/8".  If I were doing this bunch all over again, I wouldn't use as much squeeze, a little more epoxy in the matrix makes them a little easier to finish.  (I used spring clamps on the colored burlap pieces)

A few tips:
-You'll have 12 layers of some material that will squeeze down to 1/4", and a different material will have 12 layers end up 3/8" thick.  Write the number of layers and the material combination on a small piece of paper and put it under the the first layer of epoxy material.  "14 layers, 2 desert tan/2 forest green".  It'll be a permanent label so you know what it is in the future, and can use it as a guide to make another set.  It won't hurt the integrity of the handle, just a tiny piece of paper micarta at the bottom of your mycarta.

-If you have a thickness you really want to hit, you can put spacers near each corner and squeeze down tight to the spacers.  This makes a very uniform thickness piece.

-For one-offs, figure out the size piece you will need for your handle and cut your material about 1/2" bigger width and length.  You want to be able to cut off about 1/4" all around so you have a nice clean piece without the raggedy ends that might have voids and bubbles.  Don't make the pieces too big because then you're wasting epoxy.

-Start off your set of layers with 3 or 4 layers of another contrasting color for a built in liner.  I regularly use 3 or 4 layers of carbon fiber because it will really stiffen up thinner scales.  I bought some carbon fiber scrap pieces on ebay.  You can get it fairly cheap and in smaller pieces.  Cut down masking tape in some 1/4" strips and tape the edges of the carbon fiber.  Makes it much easier to work and handle without it coming apart.

I think that's about it.  Sorry for the wall of text.  OP has a bunch of good tips above and I don't want to repeat him.

Posts like the above are why we need a like/love button on this forum, awesome man!

The one with the mixed offset pieces is particularly cool and inspiring, now I want to try it.

My experience using dark denim was different though, I think maybe the epoxy is better at retaining color, on mine in the pic I posted that denim was originally black, but had faded a bit by the time it got to me to use, but was still a dark charcoal gray. The fiberglass resin bleached the color out somehow and it turned light gray.

Thinking now about trying epoxy on the next batch.

I wonder how flannel would turn out? Can get shirts with some cool patterns on them, basically tartans. It's just so soft though, denim has a grain to it.

Well that just gave me inspiration, nice idea! I assume you mean the red shop rags, thick and tough material.

I don't have any red ones anymore, but I do have a metric ton of blue ones. Wife has worked for years in surgery, and they'll open up a pack of these things and usually only use 2-3, then they have to throw away the extras or give them to employees because they're not technically sterile anymore. Super thick weave on 'em, much better than the common red ones, they work great in the shop. More texture to them than denim too.

Maybe an alternating pattern of blue towels mixed with black denim.

First few sets I made, I used fiberglass resin and blue denim.  I don't remember it looking lighter or bleached, just getting a very slight greenish tint (from the resin color) when you held it in the light just right.  I mostly used it on a couple old machetes that needed new handles, so not much sanding except i used a roundover router bit around it for comfort.  I did use some on a small neck knife handle.  When I sanded the flat, I sanded through the top color and got the backside of the denim color.  It took a little more sanding to get to the top of the next denim piece to make it blue again.  Whatever happened with your Becker, it looks great like it is.  One thing I did like about the fiberglass resin is it's hard and sands/finishes easy.

Funny that you bring up flannel.  I tried a flannel shirt because I thought it would be great.  Didn't work so well because the color pattern is all on one side (like the denim above).  I was walking around a store with my wife a while back and there was some flannel pattern polyester fleece that had the color all the way through.  I think it was for jackets or blankets.  Almost bought a yard of it because of the pattern not having a front or back to it.  I think a tartan flannel pattern would make an awesome knife handle.  Whatever the pattern you use, it has to be small scale enough to look good on a small knife handle.