Extreme Modifications

Latebound

Latebound

Joined
Jun 20, 2001
Messages
33
After snagging the teeth of my Pocket Hobbit on some cloth for the millionth time, I was seized by the urge to take the pointy little bastards off with a grinder. I haven't actually done it of course (actually, I think it might ruin the appeal of this knife), but it got me thinking. I remembered this comment by Cougar Allen:

I've been harrassing Camillus to make a version (of the pilot survival) without the stoopid saw teeth. . .
Click to expand...

Why not just get the knife and grind off the teeth yourself?

It also got me wondering about the most extreme modifications you guys have made to a production knife. Grinder, Dremel Tool, Krazy Glue, Drill Press, Duck Tape. . . What is the most extreme thing you have ever done or seen done?

-Latebound
 
(whispering in hopes the Camillus people don't hear me) Yeah, you could grind the stoopid sawteeth off, or you could fold a strip of brass or silver over them and solder it on -- BUT I STILL WANT CAMILLUS TO MAKE A VERSION WITHOUT THE STOOPID SAWTEETH!!!

Take a look at this old thread: http://www.bladeforums.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001068.html

There are some interesting posts in that thread, including my Tactical Opinel post (aka Too Much Time On Our Hands) but that was a long time ago; it's high time we had another thread on modifying knives. Let's see, what have I done lately ... I've been reshaping blades, mostly turning them into sharktooths, and reshaping handles, too, and cordwrapping them various different ways with various different kinds of cord -- 550 is NOT the only cord you can wrap handles with! And most recently I tied a turkshead on a birch handle puukko for a guard -- soaked it in superglue. I used some of that green 200# dacron cord they have in army surplus stores -- it's about 2 or 3 millimeters thick, hard round cord.
 
I have a #6 Opinel that I rounded the butt on. Now there's no corner to dig into my hand.
Been eyeing up my Spyderco Native. Think I might be able to make it feel a little better, too.
I have "modified" many small pocket knife blades for people at work. Usually re-pointing broke tips.

Paul
 
Right now I'm looking at my Cold Steel factory second Master Hunter and thinking, seriously, about cutting off that Kraton handle, replacing it with stag or linen or canvas Micarta, brass or steel single guard, reprofiling the blade to more of a clip point, sharpening an inch or so of the spine and making my own Kydex sheath for it.
Why?
Because I want it to better suit my needs, and the handle and sheath are beat nearly to Hell anyway.:D
 
Well, my latest bout of craziness ended in this;

CS Trailmaster bowie - replaced rubber handle with a mortised tang black canvas micarta one. Thinned the edge to about half the thickness of the factory axe edge and gave it a proper hand rubbed finish

CRKT Mirage - polished the liner edges, clip and screws, reprofiled the frame and replaced the Zytel scales with a set of curly maple ones

BM mini-Stryker - satin finished and file-worked the liners and anodized them a blue/purple, polished the clip and screws, replaced the G-10 scales with natural linen micarta

Stay tuned to the For Sale forum as these will be going up shortly to fund more projects :D
 
It's not really extreme, but I "changed" my Coleman/Western (W-49)Bowie knife. This is what I did to it:

*Cut 7/8ths of an inch off both ends of the massive hand-guard.
*Filed about 1/8th of an inch off the top crest of the blade.
*Rounded the blade spine, like on the CR Sebenza.
*100% mated the handle to the steel, and rounded the wood.
*Filed an "index-finger index" into the handle...Feels GREAT!


...And a picture of my "work":

Mvc-029s.jpg
 
Originally posted by blademan 13
CRKT Mirage - polished the liner edges, clip and screws, reprofiled the frame and replaced the Zytel scales with a set of curly maple ones
Click to expand...

Did you make those maple scales yourself?
 
Here are two that I did.

Was never really fond of either so I decided to customize them...

cqc7.JPG

Benchmade CQC7

410.JPG

Benchmade 410 (I think)
 
Wanna make me some scales like that for MY CQC7? ;) Edited to insert: You should have mirror polished both the blades.
 
I talked a friend of mine into flat grinding the blade on my REKAT Pikuni nice and thin. Much better slicer/cutter now.
 
Some of these mods are pretty significant. Maybe this should have been in the makers and manufacturers forum :).

cpirtle probably make the nicest looking mod (IMHO), but medusaoblongata is my favorite so far. . . . recurve. . Recurve. . RECURVE! ! !

As for BubbaBlades, how many knives have you modified? Or maybe it would be easier to count the ones you DIDN'T modify?


I'm still waiting for someone to show us their horrible mistakes or maybe the knife they put in a drill press to conduct some 'weight reduction' experiments. I know it's out there. . . don't be shy. . . we won't laugh (not too hard anyway).

-Latebound
 
Thanks for liking my stuff, it was fun to do.

I have made many other mods, some good some bad!

Here is a bad...

I started out as a REKAT Excalator with terrible lock-up and grinds. I decided to put in an oversized stop pin, thumb lug, give it a satin finish, reprofiled and textured thumb ramp and re-locate the clip for deeper carry.

After about 4 hours worth of work I was done, came out perfect. Then I realized I had made the stop pin from tool steel and wanted to switch to stainless (I'm anal like that). The piece of stainless I had was just a little bigger than the tool steel so I had to do some more work. By the time I was done I had expanded the pin size to the point where the blade would no longer pivot because it would hit the pin... hard to explain.

So in the long run I blew about a $90 knife, $10 in parts and roughly 5 hours.

Here is the pile...
 
Just to save some face from the last post, here is another one I was pretty happy with.

It was a Camillus ArcLight. I satin polished the blade, reprofiled the handle and optimized for a cord wrap, added some spine work, cord wrapped in OD paracord and made a new neck sheath from OD Concealex.
 
My horrible mistake was the first knife I made wooden scales for in my early teens -- a cheap non-auto wannabee switchblade with plastic scales. I spent hours fitting beautiful wood scales to it, and sanding and finishing, and then I had a junky knife-like object with beautiful wood scales. I still have that knife -- it doesn't even have the Italian-style lock with the pin on the tang that goes into a hole in the lockbar; it's just a regular lockback but with construction so flimsy the joint got twisted soon after I modified it so the blade is bent back at an angle when open -- it doesn't really lock either. Nice scales, though.... :)

After that I started looking for good knives with plastic scales to replace.
 
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