I bought three switchblade knives recently, all in need of repair. The first one was an 8.5 inch model with broken scales and severely damaged bolsters (it looked like someone had thrown it against a brick wall). That one turned out pretty good, I straightened everything out and rescaled it with light canary wood:
I just finished up switchblade number 2 which was an 11 inch model supposedly made in Italy (the tang stamp seems somewhat suspect). I was surprised to find that the rear bolsters were not soldered on. I'm guessing that on the cheaper knives they don't bother with this detail. No worries, I soldered them on if for no other reason than I like them that way!
So for the second knife I used Bubinga wood for the scales and on the rear scale I inset a patterned wood accent strip. The strip was a little bit wider than I would have liked but its living there now. Here's a pic of all of the parts with the scales attached to the liners and the rear bolsters soldered in place.
For the scales for both of these knives I used a water based polyurethane because I was working indoors and the fumes from regular poly are somewhat intrusive. That being said I wont I wont use the water based product again. It doesn't do much for the wood, requires 6-8 coats for adequate coverage and isn't anywhere near as durable as the mineral based product.This is just my opinion of course so take it for what its worth.
I'm not a real fan of this size of switchblade, it seem a bit too large for my liking but it came with the lot. So I put everything back together and it fires and locks as expected so it goes on my shelf with the other one.
Here's a few pics of the finished knife:
I'm learning as I go. I've got a few more Italian switchblades that I'm going to work on later this year. For now I'm moving on to a Mikov kit that I purchased directly from the Czech Republic.
I'll post some pics of that later this week.
Jeff
