All About Pocket Knives

I picked this one a while back out of a 1 buck box at the flea market. It had a broken blade, and shrinking handle material. From other posts on AAPK, this apparently was made by Camillus for a store brand, and was kind of a transitional knife in that it is after Camillus stopped pinning their handle material on but before they started gluing them on. It has 4 prongs raised from the liner to spear into the handle material to hold them on.
The only marking is "High Carbon Steel USA" on the tang stamp.
The raised prongs that held the original handle material on, I hammered them flat and left them on the liners. Added a bottle opener in place of the broken blade Rehandled with Indian Water Buffalo Horn

Very Nice I like it
Nev

I always admire your work OC.

OLDE CUTLER wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 4:40 pm I picked this one a while back out of a 1 buck box at the flea market. It had a broken blade, and shrinking handle material. From other posts on AAPK, this apparently was made by Camillus for a store brand, and was kind of a transitional knife in that it is after Camillus stopped pinning their handle material on but before they started gluing them on. It has 4 prongs raised from the liner to spear into the handle material to hold them on.

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The only marking is "High Carbon Steel USA" on the tang stamp.

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The raised prongs that held the original handle material on, I hammered them flat and left them on the liners.
IMG_5114.JPG

IMG_5115.JPG
Added a bottle opener in place of the broken blade
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Rehandled with Indian Water Buffalo Horn
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Wow what an improvement. Looks great now. Great scales you put on there and work. The broken blade replaced looks like it belongs. Nice save.

Cool, that's about perfect now!

Very nice save, OC.
It looks great now!

Sweet save, OC.

I like it!
Froe

Kinda hard to beat!

Awesome, and very creative save O.C.! And I'm surprised that you found a cap lifter that fit in place of the broken pen. Or, maybe you modified one to fit?

The pinned horn is a great improvement over the original covers. I like that long pull spear point blade, too. A fantastic job saving it!

herbva wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 11:44 am Awesome, and very creative save O.C.! And I'm surprised that you found a cap lifter that fit in place of the broken pen. Or, maybe you modified one to fit?

The bottle opener is from a Kamp King which is .070" thick and the original spring on the broken blade is .068", so it worked close enough unaltered. The only adjustment made was to move the spear blade to the front from its original rear position to accommodate the pull on the bottle opener blade. I should have shown the water buffalo horn material I used is from a product sold in pet supply stores as a dog chew. It is from India. Split it on the bandsaw and be sure to let it sit for a few days as it is prone to warping just after being cut. Then flatten the back when ready to install. This water buffalo horn also did not have nearly the stench that many horn products do when power sanding. It sands and polishes up nice for knife scales.

Shown after splitting with the bandsaw. It comes as one piece.

Nice save! That's a great Improvement on that knife!

Tom Williams, who worked for Camillus for 30 years, referred to that method of attaching the original handles as "prong handle construction."

Before that they pinned the handles on. After the prong method they use the "post handle" method. In that method a round "post" or bump of handle material stuck out the back side of the handle. The post was cast into the handle when it was made. The post then went through two holes in the outer liner and the excess plastic on the inside was melted off, as close as I can tell from examining them. This is a common method used on the later electricians knives that Camillus produced. It was probably one of the most secure methods of attaching handles that I have seen from Camillus. Having taken a number of those knives apart and put new handles on them, I can tell you those post handles are not easy to remove!

Beautiful knife and great save, OC!