All About Pocket Knives

Sometimes the gods of knife repair try to tell us to step back and take a break. But stubborn pig headed folks like me don’t pay any attention to that!
I started this knife project by cleaning up the blade a bit (200, 400, 600, 800 & 1000 grit paper and some elbow grease). The blade didn’t need much so it turned out okay; With the blade done I turned my attention to the backspring. I like to clean and polish the inner and outer edges of the spring and my tool of choice for this task is the Foredom hand piece and some sanding sleeves; The blade and spring turned out pretty good after some additional hand sanding; I went ahead and selected some mahogany bone slabs for the handles and epoxied them into place. After 24 hours the handles went to the band saw for rough shaping then to the belt sander for some additional shaping. Since I just got a new 2” x 72” belt sander I was ready to give it a try. It came with a belt that I mistakenly thought was a 220 grit (it was 120). I wasn’t prepared for how quickly the belt ground away bone and some of the steel from the bolster (the knife gods were still working against me). LOL! I took a second look at the belt and swapped it out for a 220 grit belt. After some trial and error I finally had the handles shaped the way I wanted them (the one bolster still had some heavy grind marks in it though).
After a little hand sanding the bolster on one handle fell off (damn crappy factory solder). I decided to try re-soldering the bolster hoping that the heat wouldn’t damage the bone. I used a light touch with the torch and managed to get it re-installed.
Time to drill some holes so I can finish securing the bone handles and test fit the pieces. The liners had holes in both edges for the backspring pin. I assumed that I had drilled the holes in the right location until I went to put the halves together and realized there was one hole in the top of one handle and one hole in the bottom of the other handle. The knife gods are now laughing their asses off! I know, I should have stepped away but that whole stubborn/pig headed thing prevented me from doing that.
There’s no way I was going to scrap the handles. I had some bone scraps from the handles so I sanded them down, collected the dust and packed it into the errant hole. I put a few drops of Zap a Gap in the hole, let it set and sanded and polished it out. It turned out alright (the repair was mixed in with the jigging so it virtually disappeared); Time to test fit the knife parts. Everything went together okay but the knife had a really crappy opening and closing feel. Looking at the tang on the knife I realized that the tang wasn’t shaped properly; Some file work took care of that.
I finally put it together, polished it up and put it on my shelf so I can look at it from time to time to remind myself of how things can go wrong when I get stubborn.
Parts didn’t fit, misdrilled holes, errant grinding and mis-shaped blade tang, but I managed to get the cursed knife done.

I wasn't there for the process except to hear it 2nd hand but I like the finished product.

I've done all of those! I keep telling myself...I just learned something there!
Turned out nice, Jeff!

Normally I would have gotten frustrated, then ticked off, then given up. But I actually found myself chuckling and thinking “ there’s no way this knife is going to defeat me!”
It was definitely a learning experience.
I’m just glad it wasn’t an expensive knife. I can always disassemble it later and re-use those bone handles on a smaller knife.
But for now it’ll sit on my shelf like a well earned trophy!

Looking good Jeff!

That's when you say "In the field of opportunity it's plowing time again!" I like the way it looks.

Byrd wrote:That's when you say "In the field of opportunity it's plowing time again!" I like the way it looks.

I’ve never heard that before but I like it!