To make a long story short, the house where my grandparents lived was torn down a few years ago, and it had great sentimental value to me. Not sure what all was saved when it was torn down, but I've been toying with the idea of having a custom folder or two made and using something from the house in the handle material. So far two things I've thought could be used are a brick from the chimney or a piece of the aluminum siding. Obviously both of these would have to be cut to size, shaped, etc. Do you think either of these materials would work to make knife scales or am I nuts?

I doubt brick would be very durable if it was sliced thin enough to make scales out of... it would crumble to pieces. Not sure about aluminum siding,  but your best bet would be to use part of a beam or a piece of hard wood flooring.

No...  If i were asked, I would not use them.  Maybe the Al for a small shield or plate with initials on it.

Although, I have seen reconstituted stone for scales.  Should work with brick.

It really all depends on what I can get my hands on and what was saved. When the house was demolished it was basically emptied, a hole was dug next to it and it was pushed into the hole. So I'm stuck with what was saved unless I want to grab a shovel and go do some digging.

I had kinda wondered about the feasibility of getting a 100 year old brick to stay "together" if it was sliced thin enough for a knife scale, guess I was correct to wonder.

The place was in Missouri and I'm in Texas, so I'm not really going to know if anything's available/suitable until the next time I can get up there and go through what's left. I'd love to find some of the old wood, that would ideally be probably the best thing to use. I just thought of the brick or siding as being "different", but I guess there's reasons nobody makes knife handles out of those materials....

Plenty of other things besides scales you could make from salvaged material. Re-purposing is a big thing these days.

I wonder if the brick could be stabilized with cactus juice. I'd be willing to try anyway. Ive got some old red brick laying around.

Would it work to pound the brick into powder and mix it into an epoxy?

You could probably use the siding as liners or spacers in the handle. It'd just be an aluminum line in the handle, but it'd be a piece of the house in the knife.

Pretty sure that's doable.

came here to post this. mix brick into epoxy. the smaller you smash it the better it will turn out (I think).

On the contrary, have you ever seen exposed aggregate concrete? It looks really appealing... I think grinding up to a variable size and mixing with epoxy, molding larger than necessary, the sanding to final shape size would give a really neat exposed-aggregate look to it... see below and imagine the gray cement as the epoxy and the ground stones as small bits of crushed bricks...

Appreciate all the neat ideas....some things I'd never even thought of. All depends on what I can get access to and what's not buried in the ground, but I'm going to try to use something in some way to make a keepsake.