Applied Bolster Help

S

SlyOne

Joined
Sep 19, 2006
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163
Making my first spring back folder and will have a liner with shoulder and cap bolsters. It's my understnading the right way to apply the bolsters is to rivet them to the liner. You need a blind hole in the bolster and a rivet that is staked in place. My question is how is the rivet staked? Some type of pressure fit? Solder? Thanks for any help. :cool:
 
I soldered mine in place but alot of people pin them, this is done by making a very small countersink in the pin hole and then flattening the pin on both sides. The upper bolster will be held in place by the blade pin. you can sand the pin flush with both surfaces, if done correctly with the same material as the bolster the outside of the pin will dissappear when you sand it.
 
Soldering or pinning is traditionally how bolsters are applied.
I wouldn't go to the trouble of attaching them by drilling a blind hole and staking a pin in.
 
Just tap on it from both sides and sand the inside flush, that's what I do on my lockbacks.
One trick is to countersink the hole where the bolster and liner join- in case there's any bulging it won't tend to force the liner and bolster apart quite so much.
I'd strongly recommend getting a taper reamer for the bolster side, you can do it by hand and it just takes a minute- works much better then.
Andy G.
 
Maybe I'm not thinking correctly. I thought the old time way was to drill a tapered hole through the liner. Then there was a blind or dead end hole on the inside of the bolster. A rivet was some how staked into this hole in the bolster so that now you had a bolster with a pin or rivet sticking out of it. The pin was run through the hole in the liner and then peen hammered from the opposite side of the liner to hold the bolster in place. Traditionally, I don't think glue or solder was used because when I was a kid I used to tear stuff apart to figure how it was made and on the pocket knives the bolster just fell off.
In any event one reason I don't like the soldering is that you can warp the liner if the liner is thin. AND...I'd just as soon use traditional methods. I however may use clear epoxy glue just as an added plus- not yet sure on that.
In any event I'm still wondering how the rivet or pin was staked into the blind hole.
 
On knives like that, the rivet or tab was simply punched out when the bolster was made. The tab is integral to the bolster.
If you wanted to replicate it, you could drill the blind hole and hard solder the pin in place.
Soldering was certainly used for bolsters on many knives, and still is. It would be hard to warp a liner using soft solder.
 
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