KA-BAR Rebuild-Before & After

[whitebuffalo58]

My latest rebuild. KA-BAR Olean, NY-Small 2-blade Jack.
From totally dysfunctional to a nice little Sunday go-to-meetin' knife.

[sharalds]

Nice job! How many hrs?

[whitebuffalo58]

Thank you! All together about 4-5 hours. It would have taken less, but I had to over size the blade pivot holes in the front bolsters and liners. Taper the the holes, peen in filler rod, file flush, then redrill for the actual pivot pin. All due to a careless repair attempt by a previous owner. That added atleast an hour on to the job. Good experience though, and it did away with the worbbled out holes seen in the before pics. WB

[orvet]

Nice job.
What did you use for handles?

[whitebuffalo58]

Thanks Dale! I did the handles in Ebony. I've always liked the contrast between the dark wood and the nickel silver bolsters. Wish it would have had the shield. I'd like to have given a shot at tryin' to get it inlaid back in. Oh well, maybe on a future project. WB

[just bob]

That is really nice and your work is apparent. I'd like to see someone post a tutorial on how to inlay those shields. It's not as easy as you think. The books I have show free handing it with a Dremel tool, but that must be for the experts.

[orvet]

That is really nice and your work is apparent. I'd like to see someone post a tutorial on how to inlay those shields. It's not as easy as you think. The books I have show free handing it with a Dremel tool, but that must be for the experts.

There are hardened templates you can use as guides for inlaying shields, the only problem is that they are only for one certain size & shape of shield.
Do you know how many different sizes and shapes there are?
If you don’t know, take a look at all the different ones in the GOT SHIELDS? thread (all 11 pages) and you will understand that one size templates only fits a very few shields.
http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... it=shields

There is only one company I know of that sells templates and they are over $20 each, then you have to buy the shields from them that go with each template they sell. They don’t make them for the old companies. A guy would have to have a machine shop cut the templates and then have them hardened, which I imagine would get pretty expensive. especially since you would need a few dozen just to fit the more common sizes & shapes shields.

I don’t like to inlay shields because I have to do them freehand. One little slip of the tool and you have to replace the handle you just installed. This can get really expensive with stag, ivory, etc. I use a Foredom instead of a Dremel which moves much slower & is easier to control, but even then you can hit a hard spot in the bone, stag or hit the grain in wood and it will cause the burr to jump and can ruin the new handle. Believe me, I know from bitter experience!

[whitebuffalo58]

Thanks just bob, it was a good beginner project. I've got a long way to go before I could take just any knife and perform whatever task necessary to get it to usable condition again. But, with the help of the AAPK knife mechanics threads, i'm learnin'.
A Dremel is about the only way I have to try a shield inlay, too. However, I do have one with the attachment like Dale's Foredom. (can't remember what they call those ) Anyway, I think i've probably got some of the same articles you speak of. Where you lay the shield in place, scribe around it with an Exacto knife and "carve" away the area with a Dremel. That looks like it would work fair enough on smooth handles, but materials like stag and heavily jigged bone would be a real challenge.
One idea I had was to remove most of the field area with a flat bottomed 1/8" Forstner bit. Then do the fine detail areas with the Dremel and maybe even an Exacto with some of the various blades. The Forstner bit in a drill press with a depth stop would help establish how deep to go.
Dale, I can see where the templates would be nice, but not very practicle. Especially for a shade tree mechanic like me. Even if you had the machine shop, the time you'd spend on each one would never payoff. Food for thought in that area would be to design your own 1 of a kind shield for those knives being worked on that don't have an original available.
All in all, shield inlay has to be one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when doing knife mechanics. Sounds like alot of practice on scrap materials would go a long way to learnin' the process.
Thanks for the comments and input guys, i'm not just encouraged by the comments, but learning from the input. A win-win situation on my part. WB