All About Pocket Knives

About two years back I purchased the components to build a Laguiole knife for myself as I could not afford to buy one. Building the knife had to wait though as I had no skills to build a knife at that time. I purchased the parts from Honore' Durand in Laguiole France. The spring has the traditional bee and file work. The liners are brass as are the bolsters. The blade is 12c27 Sandvik stainless. This kit came with rear bolsters but I removed them. I wanted to use Moose antler and wanted the Moose to go all the way to the tip.
The folks over at Honore' Durand are quick to point out that the skills required to build this go beyond simple pinning the knife together. All the parts provided needed to be finished.
The spot where the bee was welded on needed filing as the bead ran out of the joint and kept the liners spread too far apart.

The spring also required some thinning down as it was too thick relative to the blade tang. The spring also had to be shorted some as it protruded beyond the end of the liners.
Putting the Moose handles on was the easy part. The fitting and finishing was very time consuming. Altogether I have around 20 hours invested. It came out nice though! Take a look.
What do you think?

Randy

Very nice indeed! Looks like the end product was well worth the effort.

Good job, Randy.

That looks nice Randy!

I may have to get me a kit too.
I am too cheap to pay the price for an assembled Laguiole.

Dale I think they are charging around 22 euro's. Less than 30 bucks. Don't recall what the shipping was. You have a choice of stainless or carbon blades. The 12 C27 stainless takes a scary sharp edge! You also can have either brass or stainless bolsters.
Here is a link to page with the kit.
http://www.made-in-laguiole.co.uk/kits/ ... e-kit.html#/

Randy

Nice, I like the look of that!

That's probably the nicest looking Languiole I've seen, the moose looks great. Does the antler tuck underneath the bolster, or did that need to be fit around the curve? Well done, man! My own weak attempt at a Rough Rider version....

"My own weak attempt at a Rough Rider version...."
I did build a Chinese kit last year. They nice. Yours looks good!. I placed oak on the one I did. Blade held a decent edge. I wanted a French one so I started looking for one that might afford. Thats when I found the kit fro Honore Durand. Hard to beat that Sandvik steel though! The bolsters are beveled on the French kit and the scales need to fitted. The thing I did not like about the Chinese kit was the size of the knife. The French kit is smaller and shorter and that makes a big difference when riding in the pocket.
Randy

Very nicely done. Love the handles.