Bolster pin fix

Lon Aguiar

Lon Aguiar

Joined
May 23, 2007
Messages
96
This really got me out of a jam yesterday so I thought I would share it. I was working on a small fixed blade with nickel silver bolsters and pins. Ended up with three out of the four pin ends showing in the bolsters even though I thought everything was prepped correctly and peening the pins seemed to go well.

I didn’t want to pull the bolsters so I grabbed my cheapie electric engraver and an old 1/8” drill bit. Cut the shank off the drill bit with a Dremel and rounded off and polished the shank end in my lathe. I put the polished shank in the engraver and used it to work over each of the visible pins in the bolsters. A quick sand and polish and the pins were invisible. Saved me a bunch of time and frustration.

Sorry I didn’t get any pictures of the process (I didn’t actually think it would work) but here is what the engraver and bit look like.








Hope this helps someone else
 
Ahhh, necessity the mother of invention. Well done.
 
That's a neat idea. I have had that problem and solved it by putting the knife on a small anvil and smacking the pins on both sides with a ball peen hammer and re sanding and polishing. Thanks for sharing . Larry
 
Great fix!
I have a whole arsenal of radiused, polished hammers from almost flat to ball end and everything between. One or the other of those will usually straighten up a problem like that, on a nice clean anvil face, but there are times you just don't want to whack on it or remove any more material on the sander if possible.
 
Very neat trick! I had the same idea but never tryied because i didn't think it would have worked. Was the pin SS or NS?

Elementfe: about the nice clean anvil face...i just put a piece of bodywork tape on it, no rust embedding and no marring the bolster.
 
Bolsters and pins were NS. Don't know how well it will work on SS.
I wasn't sure that more hammering would fix the problem.
The nice thing about the engraver is that it's easy to control and you can really focus on just the pins.
 
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