Need help on this slipjoint
Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 6:46 pm
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.
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.
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!