a little jimmping, and my first time rounding the spine...

BryFry

BryFry

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Jul 29, 2009
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Just got a new Browning competition knife, pretty nice for the price IMHO. :) This is what it looks like fresh out of the box...

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The knife has no guard which makes it easy to choke up on the blade when doing more intricate carving, so I thought it would be fun to try my hand at some jimmping. :) Pluss I've allways liked the look and feel of a nicely rounded spine, so I decided to give that a go too.

I don't have many tools but I finally broke down and bought a $30 bench vise, which made this process easier. :thumbup:

...So I filed out some jimmping with a medium sized triangle file, then I used some gun-blue to patina the insides of the jimmping.
Then I used a 12" flat file to start the rounding of the spine. I eyeballed it as best I could,
Then I used sandpaper starting at 60 grit, and working all the way up to 2000 to finish the rounding. And here is how it turned out...

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A sharp eye can tell that it wasn't done by a CNC machine, but I think it turned out pretty nice for my first time. :D

Also the handles were horribly thick and blocky with sharp edges, so I sanded them way down, and put some soft curves in the scales to better fit my hands...

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Nice work. I was playing with one of those the other day, and thinking that they would be even better if the handles were worked over a bit. The rounded spine and jimping are just icing on the cake. :D
 
cool work!!! looks great.

I'm a bladesports competitor in the netherlands and have used the browning on two occasions. For bladesports, it's really not a good knife, it's too light, especially on the 2x4. Hacking with the browning easily takes up more than twice the time it takes with a more modern competition knife which has more weight behind the edge near the tip (being almost flat over the whole blade)
 
Thanks for the compliments guys. :)

-zyhano, I see what you're saying. This knife is pretty light for its size, especially towards the tip. I'm OK with that though, since I just plan on using it as a fun camping/hiking knife to play with. :D

Again, to anyone who may be thinking about getting this knife, I would highly recomend getting some rough sandpaper and be prepaired to use it on the handle! That thing was both blocky and slippery to my taste. That's why I didn't go any higher than 60 grit paper. I left the scales a bit rough to add some extra grip without being too harsh on the hand. :thumbup:

I've used it a bit now, chopping some branches and vines, I'm pretty happy with its feel and performance so far. It's a fun knife. :thumbup: :thumbup:
 
That looks great, especially for your first go! I might have to do a little looking into that beast...
 
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