All About Pocket Knives

The liners are unsticking from the yellow cell. scales on one of my better knives, a sodbuster, and a BEAUTY.
I suppose the pins will hold everything together, but I was wondering if this is likely to happen to my other knives, or if there is anything to help prevent it.
There is nothing which leades me to believe that the celluloid is responsible, because the knife is only a few months old and the scales look perfect.
This is a bit of a dilemma because it is cheaper to buy a new knife than to rehandle. The knife cost $30.95
Is this common enough to worry about?

Should I have put this in Knife Related Q&A?

I would think that the celluloid is pulling away from the brass and this could have started before you got the knife. The Sodbuster has a large pin below that, but if there were any slop (looseness), the celluloid could pull away. The pin does not look all that tight either. They call that material Yellow Synthetic and I'm not up on the Case materials. Yellow Synthetic could be one of many materials, but the brass is .023 to .025 inches thick, so the yellow synthetic is more likely to move than the brass is.

I'd squirt a little superglue under the scale and pull it down with a clamp and call it good. First time I've ever seen that happen to a soddie

muskrat man wrote:I'd squirt a little superglue under the scale and pull it down with a clamp and call it good...

If you say so, it's definitely worth a try.
Thanks guys.
BTW, it's not a Case, and by the look of the quality of the knife, this is probably a first and last time accident.

can't say how long it will hold like that, is the pin pulling away from the liner with the handle?

muskrat man wrote:can't say how long it will hold like that, is the pin pulling away from the liner with the handle?

You know MM, when I enlarge that picture, it looks like the brass liner on the right side has pulled away a little bit also. I wonder if the problem is actually the pin? What do you think?

i enlarged and it appears the liners are pulled from the rear of spring at the pin as well.

the pin might be a few thousandths off

muskrat man wrote:the pin might be a few thousandths off

Yeah, when the photo is enlarged everything is 5x as large (or more) so it throws everything out of proportion. Thanks

muskrat man wrote:can't say how long it will hold like that, is the pin pulling away from the liner with the handle?

Yes. Definitely. From the outside everything looks good.

muskrat man wrote: First time I've ever seen that happen to a soddie

That's good to hear, especially coming from you muskrat man.

you stated it's not a case. did you buy it new? what brand is it?

Edgewise wrote:...This is a bit of a dilemma because it is cheaper to buy a new knife than to rehandle...

I went and bought another one with hardwood slabs, but after sending three knives to Muskrat Man for rehandling, I have discovered that it is CHEAPER to buy a new knife, but it is infinitely BETTER to rehandle.

I bumped this back to the top to say that the knife is on it's way to M.M. and I asked him to post his findings on AAPK.
He'll put some Lignum Vitae in it, which is not the prettiest wood, but certainly the toughest and best suited to a sodbuster of this quality.

Lignum Vitae is a pretty tough wood alright. Tough enough that they used to used it for ship seals for the props. Even some WWII submarines used it for shaft bearings. It won't float either, I threw a piece of lignum vitae into a bucket of water and it sank to the bottom as did a piece of Katalox (Yucatan Ebony). Kids around the neighborhood got a kick out of that, wood that won't float.

well here are some notes I took while disassembly

Rear pin was off center in handle by design therefore pulling the top of the handles in tight against the liner and spring and bowing the lower portion of the handle away from the liners. Adhesive could have prevented this. Also, scale was not flat and true, showed signs of shrinkage in a couple areas but I didn't identify it as celluloid. As Paul requested I installed new handles from lignum vitae and used both pins and adhesive to attach them, no problem with gaps now.