All About Pocket Knives

OLDE CUTLER wrote:I picked up this Valley Forge plier knife at a local gunshow for $5 recently. The tang stamp on both blades is "Sterling Service". I had never seen one of these before, so I posted pictures of it on AAPK and several people gave me info on what it was and about when it was made. I found some pictures of originals, and saw that the originals have bone handles. This one had been reworked at some point in time, and had aluminum handles when I got it, which were nothing but UGLEEEEE! Fortunately, the plier had not been abused over its lifetime, as I am sure many of these were. The jaws close together tightly and the tiny wire cutter works good.
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So to return it to something like original condition, I wanted to make new bone handles as the original maker would have done. After watching some muskratman videos on cutting the handle material from bones (thanks muskratman), I found some Angus beef femur at our local Petsmart for a few bucks and decided to try it. I sawed the slabs and used the disc sander to flatten the back and shape them.
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When it came to jigging the bone, I studied pictures of the originals, and the bone handles on some old original pocket knives I have and was kind of undecided on how to proceed with a jigging style. After hee-hawing around on this, I finally decided to go ahead with a "random" pattern of jigging using a small ball end bit in the Dremel tool.
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I got it back together yesterday and it turned out good.
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The only minor trouble I had was in the dying of the bone slabs. I have a book on knife repair by Adrian Harris where he uses leather dye for dying the bone. I had some dark brown on hand, so decided to try it. It took several applications to get it dark enough. Another book I have by Ben Kelley Jr. suggests using potassium permanganate to dye bone, which I might try next time. I was wondering what you knife mechanics who are reading this would suggest from your experience with dying bone when making your own slabs? Anyway it is done now and in my pocket as an EDC. I wonder how many of you have an Angus beef bone, freshly rehandled Valley Forge plier knife in your pocket now as an EDC?

OLDE CUTLER wrote: I was wondering what you knife mechanics who are reading this would suggest from your experience with dying bone when making your own slabs?

orvet wrote:That's a very nice job, both the jigging and the color came out nice.
Nice rich color to the bone.

OLDE CUTLER wrote: I was wondering what you knife mechanics who are reading this would suggest from your experience with dying bone when making your own slabs?

I have jigged and dyed bone but I usually buy white bone slabs to avoid the hassle of boiling out the fat, cutting them up, flattening them out, etc. Culpepper has 3" X 1" and undyed bone slabs for 75¢. So at $1.50 a pair I figure it's more cost-effective to buy them than make them. My wife is pretty tolerant of my hobby however, a large pot of boiling beef bones on the stove might be a little more than she could handle. LOL
I have dyed bone and stag by soaking them in tobacco and also in tea. The results were not spectacular in my opinion. I also used Rit cloth dye, leather dye and potassium permanganate. PP is what I use most these days.

The other thing I consider is the time involved in doing it yourself, especially if you're repairing knives or doing custom work for people. It seems to me to be much faster and more cost-effective to buy bone that is a close match to the original instead of having to produce each set of bone handles individually. I think in the old cutleries in Sheffield had people who made the bones, stag, ivory, etc. handles for their cutlers.

I would not be surprised if that aluminum handle was original to the knife, or at least one of the options available. Aluminum handles were only found on the best knives because prior to the invention of a new refining process using electricity, (circa 1920s or 30s I think), aluminum was incredibly expensive to make and therefore was very expensive in any application where it was used.
I have a Marshall Wells Zenith knife with aluminum handles. Though it has been badly misused and abused you can still tell that it was a very nice knife at one time, probably the pride of the fellow that owned it.

TwoFlowersLuggage wrote:Probably a silly question, but that never stops me... Does the jigged area take the dye darker, like different grains in wood? Or is there some other process done that makes the jigging darker?

Jeffinn wrote:That turned out great OC!
Do you guys shape your bone by hand or do you use belt sanders (or both)? And do you shape the handles before attaching them or after?
Thanks!