All About Pocket Knives

I decided to give myself a crash course in shield installation the other night. I had tried before on wood handles to install shields to no avail. I was working on a new queen/Schatt harness jack for our friend upnorth. Well, it was late and sometimes I don't think too clearly that late and I got the bright idea to re-install the shield for him (he had mentioned it earlier or else I wouldn't have done it w/o his consent) So I drill the hole for the pin, pin it on and scribe to see which "kernels" are in my way and I eat everything down flush with a dremel, a little scraping and hand fitting landed me the following result. I think I'm going to try reinstalling shields more often, practice makes perfect I suppose. I'll definately practice on my own though!

Makes good practice to just inlay pieces of metal, coins, nail heads into a scrap piece of wood. I know, it does feel useless, but it helps.

Looks great to me MM...well done. Did you just use a micro-burr on the dremel...like a 1/32" bit?

J

thanks guys, I used the 3/32" ball cutter on a dremel.

Your results look great Kaleb!

I haven't put them in stag but have put them in wood.

Here is how I did it for an oval shield:
-I outlined the shield on the wood
-Clamped the wood in a drill press vise. The weight of the vise & the friction of it on the table kept me from moving it too fast or too far.
-put a small Dremel router bit in my drill press & set it to high speed
-set the depth on my drill press by raising the table to where it was cutting at the proper depth.
-carefully cut away the inside not getting out to the line by moving the whole vise around with the wood in it.
-went very slowly out toward the outside edge (line), barely removing anything until the shield fit.
-I epoxied the shield. but didn't pin it.

Thanks for sharing your method. I will try it when I have to put a shield on stag. Though I must admit the thought is messing up a piece of stag gives me nightmares!

Dale

I never thought of using that method Dale, thanks for sharing! I'll have to try that on the next case I rehandle. I'll be honest with ya, I had butterflies in mky stomach the entire time

I know what you mean about the butterflies!

I found that the weight of the vise helped me not to make any sudden moves that gouged outside of my lines.

I tried doing it free hand with the Dremel twice before I used the drill press & vise. It isn't as expensive to mess up a piece of wood (usually) as it is to mess up stag.

Dale, I chucked my dremel bit in the drill press too when I did that cross shield....for some reason the bit seemed to "float" a bit in the paper micarta and I ended up having to fill in some areas.

I was probably ramming it around, instead of letting the cutter, cut it's way around.

When I am doing the final sizing I barely take any off at all, maybe a .002" per pass. A slow process, but it worked for me. You may want to practice on a scrap piece first.

Let us know how it turns out.
Dale