Tip Top Barlow restoral

[Reverand]

This Camillus Tip Top Barlow has been on my mind for a couple of years now. I cannot find my "before" pictures, but if I come across them later I will post them. Anyway, I paid $2 for this knife which had both blades broken out of it. The old pocket worn Rootbeer-colored bone was just too beautiful to pass up.

Mark side

Pile side

It is raining outside today, and my indoor pictures just cannot capture the shades of color in this bone!

There was originally no brass or nickel in it, only steel and bone. It was likely made during WWII or shortly afterward. I used steel for the pivot when I put it back together, but brass for the other pins. This one is for using, obviously not a museum piece. I tried to sand the pitted bolsters as little as possible, so my pin is a bit more visible than I wanted. It was a compromise to keep as much of the original character as I could.

Tang stamp

The Camillus 4-line knife for the donor blades was one I bought off of eBay. Someone had hand-molded replacement handles with brown epoxy (it looked like a turd!), then had cleaned all of the blades - with a dremel sanding drum. The tang stamp was almost gone (and is worse after I polished out their sanding marks!)
Aaarrgh!!!
As if that were not bad enough, the tang was also worn out. I used the method in my last post about the 8OT to restore the tang. Then I had to thin the pen blade tang, and thin the Main spring in order to get everything to fit properly.
It took a lot of sanding to make the blades acceptable again, but I am pleased with the outcome.
Another knife saved from the garbage can!

[Rdubya21]

Nice save on that . Looks good !

[doglegg]

[rea1eye]

Looks like you did a lot of work on this.
Well done. It should make a wonderful EDC.

Bob

[glennbad]

Looks like it's ready for another 50 years of use! Nice job!

[Meridian_Mike]

ALL RIGHT!!!! Way to GO!!!!
GREAT save Reverand!

I love the story of this knife! A complete waste basket knife (save the covers!!) that you LOVED back into a very NICE and useful knife!

Wonderful job Reverand!

[Reverand]

It is irrelevant now, but here is a picture of the handles and spare blade from the donor knife. I don't know of any way to remove that epoxy without destroying the liners, nor any way to make the handles look acceptable.

As a side note, I have been carrying and using the Tip Top almost daily for weeks now, and the tang repair has still held up fine. I believe it is about as permanent a repair as is possible.

[TPK]

Awesome Save Reverand! Looks beautiful! That's one of them knives that have a special feeling about them.

I'll have to go look for your post about the tang repair.

Edit: Ok I found it. Very interesting repair. Here's the Link If anyone else is curious.:
viewtopic.php?t=73435

[Nev52]

Looks great