garbage to gold, the beginning

peter r

peter r

Joined
Jun 8, 2009
Messages
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a while back i got an email from a soldier in afghanistan. he will remain nameless unless he wishes to chime in here. he had heard that i was into "Pimping" knives. he approached me with a story. this is a copy of the email i received.

"Are you a maker or a pimp expert as well? I am currently stationed in Afghanistan and about 3 weeks ago I got issued an SMF that the USMC buys. It is beadblasted and has the NSN on it. About 2 weeks ago we had a huge fire here that burnt our entire supply area to the ground. My supply guys let me go in and scavange through some of the remains and I came out with 21 burnt strider SMF's and they said I could have them as they were going into the trash. I have pulled the old G-10 off as it was useless. The titanium is fine, however I don't know if the tempering is gone on the blades. I ran a file on the spine and it didn'y scratch so they still appear to be hardened. Can the tempering be repaired? And if so are you interested in working on getting these cleaned up?"


nedless to say i said yes. here are the knives just after they were pulled from the rubble

Strider_11.jpg

Strider_21.jpg

Strider_31.jpg


a few weeks after aour first emails, i received several of the knives in question and began to decide what to do with them.......


more to come.
 
You know you could probably ship them off to Strider. :p

I'm eager to see what you do with them though! :)
 
strider didnt want them. they were very rude with all my questions and told me right out they didnt send out parts. finally when i told them the story behind the knives, they said they would ship me what i needed....i never got anything they said they were shipping.
 
peter r said:
strider didnt want them. they were very rude with all my questions and told me right out they didnt send out parts. finally when i told them the story behind the knives, they said they would ship me what i needed....i never got anything they said they were shipping.
Click to expand...

I meant if you send them to Strider they will probably replace them.

Sending out parts is a bit tricky for any company, IIRC the knives are hand fitted together and tuned.
 
your right, i asked them that as well (im no fool, send garbage and hope for 21 new knives) but they said too bad id have to buy new ones.

all in all ive been less than impressed with strider.
 
peter r said:
your right, i asked them that as well (im no fool, send garbage and hope for 21 new knives) but they said too bad id have to buy new ones.

all in all ive been less than impressed with strider.
Click to expand...

As would I. I guess mass burning would fall under the category of "way to crazy to warranty" but that warranty has been their "shtick" for a while.

Maybe because it's a batch instead of individual people? I could see them not wanting you to take a bunch of free knives and boom get $8400 ($400 ea / 21 knives) for them.
 
Heck the titanium seems to have taken some gnarly heat annodizing! So whats your plan? disassemble and start sanding? :eek: Seems like a great undertaking for sure
 
Looks very interesting project. I look forward to seeing your progress in restoring these.
 
Ooh this is going to be fun. If it was me I guess I would check the RC? of each of them. If they were ok I'd just clean them up. I'm assuming the RC would still be the same as long as the temper wasn't destroyed right?
 
hardness after testing was a solid 54 hrc. after rehardening they were between 58 and 60. mostly 59. pics tonight....
 
If you don't have access to a blast cabinet I would be more than willing to bead blast them for you! :)
 
Guys I assume that Peter will ship them the Marine upon completion ?


Man that is one hell of a project , I would really dig fixing those up but it would be one hell of a time sucker.
The hard part would be replacing heat warped parts and since Strider has shown how much they want to help....

Very interesting thread , I look forward to see more of this.

Tostig
 
the marines purchase 400-500 dollar folders for soldiers???? seriously? not that they do not deserve it but i was under the impression that they (the military) was as "cheap" as they could go... correct me here
 
well i spent the day in the shop blasting sanding and making things pretty. i meant to take a bunch of pics of the blasting and cleaning process, but the wife is off galavanting with the camera.

all in all, the hardest process was remaking the scales. it was long. the incorporated spacer on striders makes extra precision work very nessessary. but luckily i had made most of them before the knives had even arrived (its what i do:)).

as for the heat treatment, i shipped the blades out to rob from "Canada knife supply limited" he is a pro in every sense of the word. hes super nice, i cant say enough about his friendlyness. you know your in good hands with rob. he got the blades back to their original wonderfulness except for 2 blades which hovered around the 57-58 hrc.

heres a pic of the blades being tested..

this pic shows the initial test of 54.5 hrc
image001.jpg


this shows after the heat treat and cryo a perfect 60 hrc:)

image002.jpg


so now for the final clean up and reassembly. i should have photos of the final product in a couple of hours.......
 
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