All About Pocket Knives

For the benefit of those of you who like myself have not seen or had one of these apart before, its kind of interesting how the locking screwdriver mechanism works on this one. Most of the electrician TL29 type knives have a split scale lock to hold the screwdriver blade open when applying pressure to a screw and keep the blade from folding shut on your fingers. This Ulster used a different lock mechanism, and it surely was the demise of this fine old knife. Some idiot opened the blade and it locked open, then inexplicably when they went to close it could not figure out the method of unlocking and closing the blade so continued to try to force it closed until the blade was broken. If you look carefully at the pictures, you can see that the spring that works the screwdriver blade has an extension that protrudes thru a cutout in the center divider underneath the master spear blade. Once the screwdriver blade is open, it locks by a notch in the tang of the blade (which is broken off now) and a hook on the end of the spring as seen in the later Buck 110. But instead of having a lever that is depressed like the Buck, this Ulster used that protrusion of the spring to unlock the screwdriver when the master blade in the closed position was pressed down. Now to see if I can find a replacement blade to fix up this fine old knife.

Thanks OC for the tutorial. Very interesting. Hope to see it when you get it fixed.

Hmmmm...

Thanks for showing the internals of that guy.

Are you going to maybe weld up the tang and re-drill it or something?

Meridian_Mike wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 9:38 pm Hmmmm...

Thanks for showing the internals of that guy.

Are you going to maybe weld up the tang and re-drill it or something?

I might give that a shot if I can't find a blade.

Very cool, thanks for posting!

Interesting. It seems like you’d have a tendency to squeeze the blade while using the screw driver and inadvertently unlocking it.

That's a fine old knife. I'm sure you'll find a donor piece somewhere.

That spring reminds me of a knife I did some time back. Only the spring was the thing that was broken. I still don't know how I managed to reproduce it, but it worked and the knife went back to it's home in one piece. That spring also had a corkscrew working off of it...Here's the broken one.

I sure hope you can get that sucker back working right! How did you get the handles off without destroying the scales? I have a WWII Camillus TL-29 that needs a new screwdriver backspring, and I don't want to ruin the original cocobolo scales.

I have really been curious as to how these knives work.


I don't know why people try to disable locks, mostly because they don't know how to use them. I've seen multiple Cub Scouts and TL-29s with the locks INTENTIONALLY disabled. I started carrying a Cub Scout a couple of years ago. Some years before, I was drilling a hole into a plastic soap dish to keep water from pooling inside. The awl on my Swiss Army Knife (Swiss Soldier) folded up and cut me bad. That's the worst I ever bled. I thought I was gonna need stitches. With the Cub Scout, not only the awl locks, but also the screwdriver. Locking awl AND screwdriver is only found on large multitools for the most part, not a decently-sized rather lightweight pocketknife.

cody6268 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:21 pm I sure hope you can get that sucker back working right! How did you get the handles off without destroying the scales? I have a WWII Camillus TL-29 that needs a new screwdriver backspring, and I don't want to ruin the original cocobolo scales.

I have really been curious as to how these knives work.


I don't know why people try to disable locks, mostly because they don't know how to use them. I've seen multiple Cub Scouts and TL-29s with the locks INTENTIONALLY disabled. I started carrying a Cub Scout a couple of years ago. Some years before, I was drilling a hole into a plastic soap dish to keep water from pooling inside. The awl on my Swiss Army Knife (Swiss Soldier) folded up and cut me bad. That's the worst I ever bled. I thought I was gonna need stitches. With the Cub Scout, not only the awl locks, but also the screwdriver. Locking awl AND screwdriver is only found on large multitools for the most part, not a decently-sized rather lightweight pocketknife.

I took it apart the same way I always do, drive a utility knife blade down between the springs to cut the pins.