Kamp King Rebuild & Restoration
Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 12:59 am
Shell handle knives can be a challenge to repair, the more complicated, the more blades and more liners involved the trickier they become.
This knife is an heirloom so the owner wanted it restored so that he could carry it.
In the beginning-
This is what it looked like before I started. The owner sent me these pictures, as you all know I forget to take before pictures.
This is what the handles looked like after I removed them from the knife. You can see the thin celluloid paper wrapped around the handle that gave it the appearance of having solid handles. Obviously when something carbon steel is not sealed and exposed to water rust happens.
Here is what the knife looked like when I split it in half and laid the pieces of one half out.
This picture shows some of the rust scale on the center liners which all had to be removed.
In this pic part of the scale had been removed then they needed to be polished.
Here are all the parts cleaned and polished, as well as possible and almost ready to be put back together. The cleanup is pretty well done at this point, and the work is getting ready to start.
But first I have to make some bolsters-
And soldier them to the outside brass liners-
Here are the soldered and shaped bolsters and the bone handles being fitted and hafted.
Now that I have outside liners with bolsters and solid bone handles it is pretty much like putting together any other knife.
Here was the final result:
A couple things to note;
I did not put the shield on the new handles as the shield was only .0012” thick. The jigging pattern in the bone was much thicker than the shield. To glue the shield on top of the bone would probably result in it being torn off. And the shield just wasn’t thick enough to inlet into the bone. The owner elected to go without the shield because this knife will be carried and used.
The other thing is the blades are not highly polished. The pitting was deep enough and pervasive enough that if the blades were mirror polished they would’ve been too thin to be useful. So I opted for cleaning the blades up with a ScotchBrite wheeled to remove the rust and try to give some uniformity to the blades. It worked well on the rust but I think the blades were too pitted to show much of a ScotchBrite finish.
I hope you enjoy the pictures.
This knife is an heirloom so the owner wanted it restored so that he could carry it.
In the beginning-
This is what it looked like before I started. The owner sent me these pictures, as you all know I forget to take before pictures.
This is what the handles looked like after I removed them from the knife. You can see the thin celluloid paper wrapped around the handle that gave it the appearance of having solid handles. Obviously when something carbon steel is not sealed and exposed to water rust happens.
Here is what the knife looked like when I split it in half and laid the pieces of one half out.
This picture shows some of the rust scale on the center liners which all had to be removed.
In this pic part of the scale had been removed then they needed to be polished.
Here was the final result:
I did not put the shield on the new handles as the shield was only .0012” thick. The jigging pattern in the bone was much thicker than the shield. To glue the shield on top of the bone would probably result in it being torn off. And the shield just wasn’t thick enough to inlet into the bone. The owner elected to go without the shield because this knife will be carried and used.
The other thing is the blades are not highly polished. The pitting was deep enough and pervasive enough that if the blades were mirror polished they would’ve been too thin to be useful. So I opted for cleaning the blades up with a ScotchBrite wheeled to remove the rust and try to give some uniformity to the blades. It worked well on the rust but I think the blades were too pitted to show much of a ScotchBrite finish.
I hope you enjoy the pictures.
I'll get some silver solder now!