Customizing the Camillus Paratrooper
Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 5:36 pm
I was sent a Camillus paratrooper qutomatic from a forum member, his requests were simple, to turn a plain working knife into a thing of beauty (what most of my jobs consist of).
He Requested:
-Single blade auto, remove cord cutter and all affiliated parts
-remove bail
-rat tailed front bolster of Nickel silver
-vine filework on backspacer
-stabalized handles of burl
The first step was to grind off the geads of the pins with a dremel ball cutter and carefully drift them out with the correct size punches.
After the bail and handles were removed you could see the bare knife
then remove the cord cutter, spring and liner
The basic knife with removed parts above it. Power went out for about 14 hours after this pic was taken, it's back up now in some parts of town a terrible windstorm swept through and leved alot of trees, telephone poles and power lines with them. many houses are free of roofs now too.
There are/was few roads that were not blocked off from busted or uprooted trees or large limbs that had been ripped off.
Whenever I work on a knife that is unframiliar to me, or is build oddly I blueprint the entire knife with actual size drawings on 1/4" grid paper and take notes on construction, and the relationship between parts. This aids in troubleshooting and reassembling the knife after repair and/or customizing.
Will be heading out to the shop to progress on this project, next step is to file the backspacer and tack on the bolsters.
He Requested:
-Single blade auto, remove cord cutter and all affiliated parts
-remove bail
-rat tailed front bolster of Nickel silver
-vine filework on backspacer
-stabalized handles of burl
The first step was to grind off the geads of the pins with a dremel ball cutter and carefully drift them out with the correct size punches.
After the bail and handles were removed you could see the bare knife
then remove the cord cutter, spring and liner
The basic knife with removed parts above it. Power went out for about 14 hours after this pic was taken, it's back up now in some parts of town a terrible windstorm swept through and leved alot of trees, telephone poles and power lines with them. many houses are free of roofs now too.
There are/was few roads that were not blocked off from busted or uprooted trees or large limbs that had been ripped off.Whenever I work on a knife that is unframiliar to me, or is build oddly I blueprint the entire knife with actual size drawings on 1/4" grid paper and take notes on construction, and the relationship between parts. This aids in troubleshooting and reassembling the knife after repair and/or customizing.
Will be heading out to the shop to progress on this project, next step is to file the backspacer and tack on the bolsters.
Thankfully, my boys won, and power came back on 6 hours later so I could get ready for work 
Lotta fried electronics... I coulda used the day off 
)! I didn't see that one coming. 
I had fun browsing your gallery - nice work on the site also. 
