All About Pocket Knives

Case XX era Farmer's trapper with a spey blade. I've wanted one for a while, but they're harder to come by and pricier than their clip bladed cousins. I found this one on the bay. It'd been someone's mint specimen, but it'd had yellow cell scales that had began to outgas and pitted the unsharpened blade a bit. So the seller jerked the scales off and sold it for a real nice price as a parts knife.

I sent it to Dale along with another knife I'll post in a minute, with literally a stick of walnut out of daddy's stove wood pile. I couldn't get the shield to show up well, but this is the original pinned shield on this knife. It's way better than I expected and it's already seen some pocket time. I wish I could get all the different grains and striations to show up because it really is beautiful in hand.

Here are the sellers before pics and my poor after pics. Maybe Dale will come along with some better ones.

Wow, Dale did a great job with that!

! Great salvage job. Dale don't half step when it comes to knife work. Walnut from your Dads wood pile, I like that too!
Treefarmer

Thanks guys. He really did a bang up job I think.

TF daddy showed me this piece of wood last year. Said he saw it in a rick of wood he bought and liked it. So he sat it beside the wood stove to dry for a whole winter and he gave it to me the next Janurary when he found out I was having a couple of knives done.

This ones a mite different with the one end left fat like a hawkbill. But it sure does fit your hand well.

I love it, great work Dale, and a fine addition to your pile Colonel. That's a really useful pattern, I am a big fan of spey blades and a nice long one like that is especially useful. Works very well with food and also as a peanut butter spreader. Nothing like a long spey blade for removing those pesky ribs from inside of hot peppers or bell peppers too...really like that wood as well

I am glad you like it Wade!
Thanks everyone for the kind words.

There were a few challenges with this the wood for these knives, the walnut was pretty soft for a hardwood.
In an ideal world it should have been stabilized before being used as handle material, but I tried to harden it by applying multiple coats of Zap-A-Gap thin to help harden the wood some. It helped some, but it is still softer than I like.

I used the one knot in the wood in the handle of the coke bottle handle so I didn't have one to use for this knife.
I tried to get some grain and contrast by using the line where the heart wood meets the sap wood. Yes the sap wood is softer, but the heart wood was a bit plain IMO, although the grain came out nicely with the Zap and then polyurethane on top of it.
I was surprised that there was some chatoyance to the wood, especially seen in the last picture.
I am glad you enjoy it Wade and I am happy you are packing it!