All About Pocket Knives

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. 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. 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.

Dale, I'm really impressed with what you were able to do with those parts. Was the intention always to do a shadow pattern?

Those blades must be really snappy, the parts are all new, yes?

Very cool!

Very nice work Dale!

Wayne

How do you spin the pins instead of peening? I know many manufactures spin pins but how does it work? Thank you and the knife looks great!

Nice work as always Dale! Looks awesome. I know that the few smaller pen knives I have worked on were a pain to do. But very rewarding when all was said and done

Randy

Thanks guys, I appreciate the complements.
It is not a perfect build, but considering I was using old parts that were not meant to go together; I was pleased with the end result, especially considering that it has wooden handles, something I have never seen on a small penknife. If the wood did not have the holes through it I could have thinned it more and made the handles thinner, but if I got too thin the filler in the holes would have shown through to the outside. If I had a second set of handles I could have used if I messed up the first one I could have been a bit more daring, but I had one shot with the handles, so I played it safe and kept them thicker.

Jeffrey wrote:How do you spin the pins instead of peening? I know many manufactures spin pins but how does it work? Thank you and the knife looks great!

Good question Jeffery-
Most of the knife supply houses sell pin spinners, but I have never had any work as well as the carbide spinners I got from the Camillus factory. I do not know where to get more carbide spinners, I wish I did!
I have even looked into having some made, but my local carbide tool manufacturer has no way to make the dome in the center of the spinner.

Here is a thread on spinning pins: http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... n+spinning

This thread is a tutorial I did on repairing jack knife. In the thread I show the steps I use in spinning a pin: http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... n+spinning

Those threads should give you the basic idea.
Let me know if you have more questions.

Thank you Sir, the knife that you restored is really cool! I am a fan of pen knives.

Great job Dale! Sounds like there were lots of challenges but you still got it finished.
I probably would've given up.