A few months ago Mike (galvantic1882) sent me some Cattaraugus parts and asked me to put them together and make a knife for him. He also sent me two pieces of rosewood that were precut as handles for something else; it appeared to be perhaps a fixed blade of some sort. The rosewood turned out to be Cocobolo, which is a member of the rosewood family. I believe Mike said he had found these pieces of rosewood in the attic of the old Cattaraugus factory. The rosewood was rough cut and dirty and far too thick for the handles of this tiny penknife.
When I put the wood on my belt sander to thin it I discovered (by the distinct aroma) that it was indeed Cocobolo, a member of the rosewood family. I also discovered that these pieces had been predrilled for whatever knife they were to be used on.
- These are the handles after I had thinned them a little on the belt sander.
The holes were too far apart and too large to use as the pivot pin holes for the penknife. The pieces were too small for me to work around the holes. Fortunately the holes were not drilled all the way through the wood but stopped about 3/64” from the surface of one side.
- There were two tabs at the end of the handles which were stepped down apparently to fit under a bolster or something. I'm not sure what these handles would've been used on, perhaps a fixed blade knife of some sort?
Notice in the lower handle the liner laying on top of it covers over the holes and goes right to the edge of where the handle was cut down to make the tabs on the end.
I made sure the backside of the wood was completely flat by using a lapping block.
I use the sawdust generated on the lapping block and mixed it with epoxy to use as wood filler for the holes in the backside of the handles.
After the glue was dried I left the handles again to remove any excess wood filler and then glued the handles to the liners.
I am pretty sure these blades were not intended to fit in the liners that I had, at least not the small blade as the nail next set well below the top of the blade pocket. After the knife was assembled I had to send down the liner and handle to lower the pocket so the pen blade was accessible. Even then it was necessary to add a cut out for easy access to the nail neck on the pen blade.
The blades were not made to be used in this frame and probably were not intended to be in the same knife, so I did have a little problem. The pen blade wanted to bite the liner so I had to shave the liner at the edge just a little bit. The pen blade also wanted to rob on the master blade. I was able to minimize but not totally eliminate the blade rub by making a 0.015” brass shim and installing it between the pile side liner and the tang of the pen blade. This did not eliminate the blade rub, but it did minimize it. The pen blade rubs the primary blade approximately the last 1/8” of an inch before it closes. Not too bad, for blades that were not intended to be in the same knife.
I always like to make a drawing of the knife I am building or rebuilding.
This is the drawing I made of this Cattaraugus.
I finished the handles with hard carnauba wax applied with a buffing wheel. These pictures were taken before the application of the carnauba wax. Sorry, I forgot to take any after waxing it.
If I had had my preferences I would have been the pins on this knife as opposed to spinning the pins, however the wood was rather dry and I was afraid that they would crack. The knife is so small the pivot hole in the blades is only 0.070" so I had to pin them with nickel silver pins that were 0.0675". I didn't have any tiny brass or nickel silver washers that would work as birds eye rivets so I had to spin the pins for this knife.
This was a fun project and as always with something like this was a learning experience.
