First Project and Thank You

Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
693
Howdy Y'all,

Well, I've just finished my first knife restoration project, so I thought I'd show it off, and also say thanks for some great help I received along the way.

I recently found an old Camillus Model 33 Easy Open Jack that was literally laying on the ground on a friend's family property. It looked like this:

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Actually I had already done a bit of peening on the bolster pins in that pic. The whole knife was rusted and tarnished.

The land used to be a working chicken farm, and by the look of the pen blade, I'd say it was someone's daily work knife that fell out of a pocket and was long ago forgotten. My friend didn't want it, and when I saw "Camillus" on the tang stamp, I was intrigued. So, I decided to try to rescue it from the landfill, and maybe give it a second life.

Now, it looks like this:

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The scales are stabilized fiddleback maple that I bought directly from K&G. The figure is obviously a lot nicer than the pics show. Scales are held on the old fashioned way, with peened brass pins only, no epoxy. They feel like they aren't going anywhere, anytime soon. There were no power tools used anywhere on this project, except for a little buffing of the bolsters with my grinder.

I was able to fix a lot of side to side blade play as well. The springs are old and loose, so there's still a good bit of vertical play, and the little pen blade likes to run down inside the slot past the nail nick. Not sure if there's any way to fix those issues short of all new springs.

I must thank you for the great advice I got on this forum, both in new and old threads. Without it, this project surely would not have turned out as well as it did. Special shout-outs to Hellspawn, BurlSource, woodster, and S. Alexander for some particularly helpful information.

Hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving!
 
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Great restoration! Looks like you've just given that Camillus a couple more generations of life :thumbup:
 
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