Custom scales and blade centering

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Wil lRogers

Joined
Oct 29, 2013
Messages
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I am considering buying custom scales for one of my knives, which has a blade that is off-center. I am wondering what the chances are that the blade will still be off-center after I put the new scales on. If the off-center blade is caused by bad alignment of the screws in the original handle, then the knife with the custom scales might be centered (assuming the new scales had screws that were properly aligned). So my question is, what is the likelihood that the reason a blade is off-center is something in the handle, versus something in the blade itself, which would not be changed by replacing the scales?

I'm not asking for any definite answer - just some opinions. Thanks.
 
It's hard to pinpoint why the blade is off center....

Have you tried messing around with the handle screws and pivot (either tighten the screws in different order and pivot first or last) ?
 
Just to add, I am not very scientific about the method, It's more trial and error for me (and some blades will not center because of tolerances being way to far off on a specific knife)

I do the following:

Loosen the pivot and all scale screws.
Hold the blade centered with one hand.
Tighten the scale screws (try different orders)
Tighten the pivot (usually last)

You can feel the blade move in different directions as you go through this process, and if it's not a tolerance issue where something is badly mis-aligned, you can usually get the blade centered (or very close to it)
 
Thanks for your reply. Yes, I've tried loosening and re-tightening the screws, without any success. But even supposing I could fix the centering with the original scales, I'm still wondering whether I would have a similar problem with new scales. Obviously there is no definite answer for all knives - I'm just trying to get a sense of whether the alignment of the screws or pivot is the determining factor in centering, or whether there is something in the blade itself that could cause the problem. I would guess the former, but that's just a guess.
 
In my experience, if a blade won't center with stock scales a custom set won't change that. The holes would have to be significantly off to affect centering in the first place.
What's the knife in question?
 
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