All About Pocket Knives

No model number on this one, just a small Camco pocket knife with severely shrunken handles. Main blade snap is a little weak but it's good enough to use. I decided to go with some amber colored bone in a Richmond pattern.
Once I disassembled the knife I noticed that there were little triangular tabs used to hold the original handles on. I'm assuming that these tabs were heated and somehow melted into the handles (not sure what that process would be but that's what it looks like to me). I hammered the little tabs flat and drilled some 1.5 mm holes for the handle pins; Sanded the bone slabs flat and squared up the end where they would meet the bolsters. Then I glued and clamped them into place; After the glue set, I took them to the 4"x36" sander to finish fitting the bone to the liners. This is normally a fairly straight forward process. I finished one of them then started on the second one. Somehow the bolster managed to get wedged underneath the fence of the sander and in a split second the sander launched the handle across the garage. I heard it hit something but had trouble tracking down where it went. I finally found it on the garage floor. The bone had separated from the liner and unfortunately had chipped in the upper right corner; I had another set of the amber slabs so I started over and created a new handle for the broken one.
Here they are rough fitted to the liners; I went ahead and cleaned up the backsprings and the center liner; The knife went together well, here it is with some pins installed to see how everything fits; And here's a few photos of the finished knife; (heres the same handle, different lighting); There ended up being a small nick in the one rear bolster (I assume it happened when the knife handle crashed into my toolbox during its unscheduled flight in the garage). But for an inexpensive project knife, it think it turned out pretty good

That little Camco was never dressed that well in its former life. That is great color on those scales. Glad you had another set of scales. Great job and maybe you can use that scale on a smaller knife.

Beautiful work Jeff
Very impressive.

Nice job Jeff.
The triangle of liner material you refer to it's called a prong. Camillus use that method of attaching moldable plastics like celluloid and some of the early plastics before Delrin.

orvet wrote:Nice job Jeff.
The triangle of liner material you refer to it's called a prong. Camillus use that method of attaching moldable plastics like celluloid and some of the early plastics before Delrin.

Thanks Dale!
I’ve come across one or two knives with the prong style liners. It’s definitely an economical way to attach handles.

Looks great Jeff! I like how you took alot of the jigging down and made some smooth spots. Works great with that amber.

You've been busy, Jeff! Looks good...and good idea Doglegg!

Looking good!

Nice work!

Doc B wrote:You've been busy, Jeff! Looks good...and good idea Doglegg!

Yes, the weather is finally warming up a bit out here in Michigan so I’ve been able to get downstairs and out to the garage to work on knives for a bit.
I’m trying to get through a group of some knives I bought back before I knew what to look for. So I’ve got a box with a dozen or so knives left that I need to either refurbish or disassemble. A lot of times the bone cost as much or more than the actual knife. But I enjoy working on them so the cost to fix them isn’t really a factor for me (it does make it hard for me to sell them and make a profit so a lot of times I just keep them).
I didn’t start out as a collector but I ended up hanging on to a lot of fishing knives and a gang of Barlow’s. So I guess I’m a collector of altered knives!

doglegg wrote:That little Camco was never dressed that well in its former life. That is great color on those scales. Glad you had another set of scales. Great job and maybe you can use that scale on a smaller knife.

Thanks doglegg!

Old Folder wrote:Beautiful work Jeff
Very impressive.

Thank you Dan! My skills seem to improve a bit with each knife that I do.

glennbad wrote:Looks great Jeff! I like how you took alot of the jigging down and made some smooth spots. Works great with that amber.

Thank you sir! I appreciate the kind words.

samb1955 wrote:Looking good!

Thanks!

#goldpan wrote:Nice work!

Thanks Randy, I appreciate it!