How much sterling is in a knife handle

I am trying to determine if there is a way to find out if a knife handle is filled with lead, and if so is there a safe way to remove the lead filling and dispose of the lead once it is removed? I don't have any experience with lead-filled handles. I suggest checking with someone who has a repair capability. Here's another site: www. You might also check the ads that appear on this page. If you find out anything, post a comment and tell us about your experience. I have scrapped thousands of knife handles many are soldered to the blade with a lead satiated solder.

We discover this when my sons routine blood test came back with a high lead level. Post a Comment. Silver-related Ads - Refresh screen or scroll down right sidebar for more choices. After watching the YouTube video in the previous post, we decided to investigate the inside of a knife handle on our own. In the first picture is a fairly old Gorham Chantilly knife.

We estimate that this knife is between 60 and 80 years old but that's just a guess. There was a crack in the blade so we didn't mind ripping it apart to see what was inside. In the second and third pictures, you can see where we have peeled the sterling outer casing of the handle back a bit.

You can see the round shaft of the blade embedded in epoxy inside the handle. We have knocked a bit of the epoxy away at this point.

The third and fourth pictures show the sterling casing with roughly half the epoxy removed. In the fourth picture, you can see a bit of the remaining epoxy in the lower portion of the handle. The final picture shows the knife blade with the round extension normally embedded in epoxy. You can see indentations probably designed to help it grip the epoxy. There is a bit of epoxy laying beside the blade.

This was taken from the tip of the handle. You can just make out some of the Chantilly design in the epoxy. We weighed the sterling we removed from the knife. We don't know if that's a good working estimate for all such knives because construction techniques may differ.

Click on any picture to see a larger version. Or, you can send us an email by clicking on "Email Silver Jim" in the right column. Filled knife handles I'm in the process of buying a Gorham sterling flatware set from a local place.

I know it's impossible to know for sure, but what would be a good estimate of how much silver is in a typical sterling butter knife handle? What do you think would be a good price to offer on these if he's willing to deal? He made it sound like it was something that he didn't really want or like to do.

If I can get them cheap enough, I would probably just flip them onto the bay asap. This info in quote is originally from Prospector. The rest is from a set that was for sale. I think I'll bring this back up tomorrow when I'm picking up my forks. I wonder what it would be worth NOT to have to deal with messing with all that work.

I have no idea how much work it is to strip this stuff, so anyone with an idea of how low I may be able to go without offending him? How much silver is in a knife handle? If you want to know more, send us your questions! More Silver Articles How much is silver flatware worth? Sell silver spoons Cash for silverware. Sell now Calculator Reviews.