Need help on this slipjoint

[joshdenne]

Hello-all,
I'm new to this forum as I mainly collect knives, but don't often display or share my collection or projects. This restoration, however, has me on the ropes, and I need some serious help in figuring out how to proceed from here.
A little background I guess; one of my favorite hobbies is restoring anything I can get my hands on that I think I can tackle (or at least learn from), ranging from old furniture, to small metal pieces, to knives. I have a limited space to work in, so most my work is done purely by hand tools. My friends know I like fixing different things, and so when one came to my apartment with an old knife he found crushed in a parking lot, I took it off his hands and put it into my to-do pile.
A few months ago I finally dusted it off and decided to do some research on what I have exactly. Turns out it's an old Imperial from what I researched the early 20th century. It was rusted, stuck, and missing a scale, but I saw its potential and set about disassembling it to clean, rebuild, and re-handle. The cleaning went well, and I made my own pins to get it all together, but during the dry reassembly, the backsprings wouldn't fit. I looked everywhere I could online, and joined a few forums here and there to see if my problem is a normal one for making knives or if my dumb self bit off more than I could chew.
This step is glossed over in every single video and reference I have found, with the best mention being that it's time to set the pins, and I have received very little actual advice on how to remedy the situation. At this point I'm almost ready to just throw it away and save the aggravation, but I don't like something so small to be able to defeat me, so I'm giving it a few more chances before it meets the crucible and becomes something else. I have loads of pictures I can upload, but I'll just show the ones for now that illustrate where I'm at on this little bastard.
Thanks ahead for any help that may get me to the next step.

[Miller Bro's]

Do you have a bench vise?

[joshdenne]

I have access to one in a shop I use for larger projects. I spent a lot of last weekend over there using the vice like I see on youtube videos. Maybe I'm missing something with it. I'm much more comfortable woodworking than metalworking, so this is a bit out of my comfort zone.

[just bob]

I'm not sure I'm understanding your question but you have to compress the springs. Assemble one end and compress the other. These may help.

http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... =invention


http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... 38&t=13147

[muskrat man]

channel locks work, one jaw on the spring the other on the edge of your assembly block when you have the spring in the position it's in in pic 3. or assemble without backsprings, set them in, compress them in the bench vice then insert your pin. let us know how it goes.

[joshdenne]

I checked out the two links you sent me. That first one is a really neat tool. I may be able to craft something up like that, but would love if a tool out of my box could do something similar. The second link you sent me was actually the very first resource I went to when I got stuck. I had originally planned to restore it with as little help as possible, but the step I'm on proves that maybe I took a bit more than I could handle with my limited tools, resources, and knowledge. I'm also not really trying to buy anything specialized for the job, as this project has me questioning how many more knives I plan on restoring (fixing a table or chair seems like a breeze compared to this).

[#goldpan]

Well I hope this helps. I used to do this with only a pair of pliers. Look at the photos, I hope that they can help you. For the sake of the photos I did not use any proactive barrier to protect the knife surfaces. Good thing I keep a cutaway knife on my bench! Place one jaw of your pliers on the spring and the other as far to other side of the knife as you can. Then slowly squeeze the spring down over the tang of your blade until it pops into the notch. It may slip a few times before it goes where you want. Hope it goes the first time!

Good luck

Randy