Schrade Walden 204 - Heavily Modified

[Jeffinn]

I’ve purchased a few of these electricians knives recently. This one had a badly abused main blade so I decided to try my hand at a different kind of mod. After disassembly I shortened the liners by 3/4”, then shortened the back spring by a similar amount. I reprofiled the blade into a sort of florist budding blade (still kinda new to the blade reprofiling thing). I drilled the new backspring hole in the liners then re-assembled the knife with some new smooth sunset bone handles from Culpepper. I spent a little time in laying a new shield and then polished it all up.
It’s probably not a knife that could be resold but it was a great learning experience.
Here’s the finished knife;

[Steve Warden]

Cool!
Very pretty bone.

[edge213]

Interesting

[Meridian_Mike]

Good work Jeff!
I like the idea of making lemonade when you get a lemon!
The balance looks good.
SO, when you shortened the liners and the spring, did you take the 3/4" at the same end for each?
I suppose you needed to keep the rocker pin hole in the same spot in the spring.... So, did you just shorten the spring at the blade end?

VERY good idea with the work.... yes, I agree, doing what you needed to do to make the knife functional and look good meant you had to use the old bean!
Great job! Thanks for showing!

Mike

[Jeffinn]

Good work Jeff!
I like the idea of making lemonade when you get a lemon!
The balance looks good.
SO, when you shortened the liners and the spring, did you take the 3/4" at the same end for each?
I suppose you needed to keep the rocker pin hole in the same spot in the spring.... So, did you just shorten the spring at the blade end?

VERY good idea with the work.... yes, I agree, doing what you needed to do to make the knife functional and look good meant you had to use the old bean!
Great job! Thanks for showing!

Mike

Thanks Mike.
Yes, I shortened each liner (at the butt end not the bolster end) then shortened the spring at the blade end. It required me to drill new holes in the liners for the backspring pin. The positioning of that hole is the tricky bit. You can lay the spring out with a temporary pin in the butt end to get an idea of where the hole should be but the actual location will shift slightly once you compress the spring. It was strictly an eyeball engineering task for this knife and it worked out. (I’m sure there’s a better way of doing it but since this was a one time mod I went with what I had).
I might swap out the blade at some point in the future and replace it with a nice clip point blade to make it into a single blade Barlow style knife. But for now it goes on the shelf.
Jeff

[kootenay joe]

The Schrade-Walden 204 is a 'stout' knife and there are lots of them 'out there', more than there are collectors who want them so prices are low even for unused examples.
With those bone handles a dull knife has become a beauty !
I think the 204 is a great knife to modify and with less work if you start with full blades. Put on new handles and mod the master blade (saber grind if possible ?) and it becomes a stout and beautiful EDC knife, that i think many of us would love to own.
Jeff your knives always look so attractive. Do you do knife modification for others, for a price i mean, not free ?
kj

[Meridian_Mike]

Yes, I shortened each liner (at the butt end not the bolster end) then shortened the spring at the blade end. It required me to drill new holes in the liners for the backspring pin. The positioning of that hole is the tricky bit. You can lay the spring out with a temporary pin in the butt end to get an idea of where the hole should be but the actual location will shift slightly once you compress the spring. It was strictly an eyeball engineering task for this knife and it worked out. (I’m sure there’s a better way of doing it but since this was a one time mod I went with what I had).

All good points Jeff...
I have noticed that you can put a "pre-set" position for the spring at about half the spring thickness to get a decent tension on the blade.

Also, seems like the springs will have a slight bend from the rocker pin hole to the end where the blade engages. SO.... I suppose since you shortened the spring you had to put the rocker pin hole slightly more inward in the liner?

Did you have to shave the thickness of the spring any to accommodate for the shorted length from the rocker pin forward?

I am just throwing out a bunch of thoughts.....

(get back to work Mikie and leave Jeff alone!!!)

[herbva]

Very interesting mod Jeff! I must admit I've never considered going to all that trouble to shorten an knife. I have noticed quite a few vintage knives that I have disassembled for one reason or another have a much larger hole drilled in the center liner for the what I call the rocker pin or spring pin. After reading this thread I think I understand that larger hole is just an easy way to accommodate the slight shift in hole position when the springs are compressed.

[Jeffinn]

The Schrade-Walden 204 is a 'stout' knife and there are lots of them 'out there', more than there are collectors who want them so prices are low even for unused examples.
With those bone handles a dull knife has become a beauty !
I think the 204 is a great knife to modify and with less work if you start with full blades. Put on new handles and mod the master blade (saber grind if possible ?) and it becomes a stout and beautiful EDC knife, that i think many of us would love to own.
Jeff your knives always look so attractive. Do you do knife modification for others, for a price i mean, not free ?
kj

Thanks KJ!
And yes, I do occasionally do knife repairs and modifications for other folks.
Jeff

[Jeffinn]

Yes, I shortened each liner (at the butt end not the bolster end) then shortened the spring at the blade end. It required me to drill new holes in the liners for the backspring pin. The positioning of that hole is the tricky bit. You can lay the spring out with a temporary pin in the butt end to get an idea of where the hole should be but the actual location will shift slightly once you compress the spring. It was strictly an eyeball engineering task for this knife and it worked out. (I’m sure there’s a better way of doing it but since this was a one time mod I went with what I had).

All good points Jeff...
I have noticed that you can put a "pre-set" position for the spring at about half the spring thickness to get a decent tension on the blade.

Also, seems like the springs will have a slight bend from the rocker pin hole to the end where the blade engages. SO.... I suppose since you shortened the spring you had to put the rocker pin hole slightly more inward in the liner?

Did you have to shave the thickness of the spring any to accommodate for the shorted length from the rocker pin forward?

I am just throwing out a bunch of thoughts.....

(get back to work Mikie and leave Jeff alone!!!)

I took a quick measurement of the current holes placement from the liners edge and tried to place the new relocated pin hole in about the same distance. For this particular knife that seemed to work okay. I didn’t have to shave any of the thickness off of the spring. I generally clean up the back edge of most of my knives after assembly so that the liners and springs are all even.
With a decent belt grinder it’s a fairly straight forward process starting with a 60 or 80 grit belt to remove most of the “proud” material then using 120, 220, 320, 400, 600 and occasionally 800 grit belts to get a decent finish.
Jeff

[royal0014]

Very good reconstruction. Kinda reminds me of the GEC #25 "barlow" offering.
I like it .. ... ..

[Reverand]

I love it!
I have a couple of old knives that I had considered trying to shorten, but I thought that I would have to make a new spring. I never considered shortening the blade-end of the spring.

Duh!! It is so simple that I never would have thought of it! And you turned an old unwanted beater into a beautiful, usable knife. Great work!! You are an inspiration to us newbies!

[Doc B]

I agree, it kind of puts it in the GEC #25 arena. I like it!

[XX Case XX]

That's some really nice work Jeff, and those bone handles give that knife a great look. Nicely done.

___________
Mike

[KnifeSlinger#81]

Now it's similar to a schrade 175. Good work.

[Colonel26]

I like it! But then again I’m a sucker for a sheepsfoot blade.

[orvet]

Nice work Jeff, it's a bit tricky to do sometimes but it looks like he did a great job!

[cody6268]

Great job! The Electrician is my favorite heavy work knife (and an EDC--keep it simple stupid!), and a sheepsfoot blade is even better suited than the spear.

In my opinion, the 204 is the best electrician knife one can buy at a cheap price. The Bear and Kleins aren't that good. Camillus are just fine, but Delrin. With the 204 you get cocobolo handles and a nice bowtie shield (which I guess would, have originally, been used to stamp "TL-29").

I've got a few that need some work done. Two Boker electrician's knives which are like new, aside from some dunce who tried to modify the screwdrivers to fit a Phillips screw, and failed, miserably. Both blades appear to still have their factory edges, and one even still has its etch. Thinking about ditching the screwdrivers entirely on those, since the position of the nail nick (right at the tip) prevents them from being modded to a Wharncliffe profile. I've got a Camillus that had, apparently, been in some chemical which badly ate at the back handle. And my old Kutmaster Barlow with shrunken plastic handles of unknown composition (I think the knife, for sure, is new enough to be Delrin). And handles, I keep saying bone, but there's some nice Kirinite being made these days.