My 11 year old son has a modest collection of inexpensive but nice knives. I was looking over his collection with him and we came to his Buck 143 PakLite Skinner. He had saved up some money and bought it at Walmart a year or so ago. We had painted it flat dark earth but it hadn't seen much use. I found the handle too short and the blade just has an ungainly appearance (IMO) with the recurved blade, low hollow grind and tall curved spine.
We decided to do some work to it and made some drawings of what we wanted. We would drop the height of the spine, eliminate the ridge behind the index finger, do a full flat grind, add handle scales and slightly thin the handle to eliminate the jimping. We pushed the pins into the apices of the cutouts to eliminate slop in the handle.
I made him a fixed blade last summer out of 5/32" O1 with homemade burlap mycarta and red liners.
He loves the burlap and asked if I had any more. I scrounged some up on my work bench. I had some blue liner material laying around. He also chose black micarta pins over nickel silver. With a little work we had a blade we both much preferred over the original. It has a very thin flat grind now. I don't know how 420HC will hold up with such a thin edge but it cuts like a laser. I love the look of a machine finish but it's tough to make it look good on my 1x30. Don't look too close.
It was a fun project using materials on hand. The only cost was a little bit of time. Now he has two cool fixed blades but is complaining of not having a sheath for either one(the 143 doesn't fit the stock sheath anymore). I guess it's time to learn leather work!
Thanks for looking. The battery died on my camera so I apologize for the cell phone pictures.
We decided to do some work to it and made some drawings of what we wanted. We would drop the height of the spine, eliminate the ridge behind the index finger, do a full flat grind, add handle scales and slightly thin the handle to eliminate the jimping. We pushed the pins into the apices of the cutouts to eliminate slop in the handle.
I made him a fixed blade last summer out of 5/32" O1 with homemade burlap mycarta and red liners.
He loves the burlap and asked if I had any more. I scrounged some up on my work bench. I had some blue liner material laying around. He also chose black micarta pins over nickel silver. With a little work we had a blade we both much preferred over the original. It has a very thin flat grind now. I don't know how 420HC will hold up with such a thin edge but it cuts like a laser. I love the look of a machine finish but it's tough to make it look good on my 1x30. Don't look too close.
It was a fun project using materials on hand. The only cost was a little bit of time. Now he has two cool fixed blades but is complaining of not having a sheath for either one(the 143 doesn't fit the stock sheath anymore). I guess it's time to learn leather work!
Thanks for looking. The battery died on my camera so I apologize for the cell phone pictures.
