wooden sword hilt core cracks

[Hugh Long]

Colleagues, I need some advice. I dissasembled my sword hilt today to recover the leather and ai noticed cracks in the wood core around the tang. Not split all the way through, but reasonably long.

I have heard of people stabilizing wood with crazy glue. Can I do something like this, or should I put a new wood core on?

I am looking for an easy solution as I'm not much of a wood worker.

I have only cut with this sword maybe a dozen cuts...just got this new cold steel hand and a half.

Can I just ignore them and re-cover it?

Advice?

[Brian Hunt]

Tough question,

if it was me and I was trying to avoid making a new hilt, I would try filling the cracks with epoxy and let it harden for 24 hours before reasembly.

Brian Hunt
GFS

[Shane Smith]

I agree. I have fixed a hilt or two with epoxy. A nice leather wrap over that should get the job done. I've seen Hughs leather work so I'm sure it will come out servicable enough. Good luck Hugh!

[Bill Tsafa]

It happened to one of my swords too. I wraped the handle with tough clear tape and then wrapped that with masking tape to give it a grip. I got another year of hard contact use out of it on my tire-pell. I suspect that the crack did not go all the way through the wood so the tight wrapping prevented it from getting worse. I broke it in the tang a year later durring practice. I am fairly sure the crack in the wood was unrelated to the later break in the tang. It was the Valiant Armory Black Prince. Details are on my website:
http://mysite.verizon.net/tsafa1/swordreview.htm