Hey, I also consider a BM42 an expensive knife. I wouldn't want to carelessly destroy one either. To afford them and some other luxuries that I enjoy, I have to economize in other areas of my life. I have never tried to disassemble one. I watched in horror as Clay beat on his. My understanding is that the pins are pressure fit under considerable force. The best way to remove them is with a pin press. You can find such a press at most any machine shop, especially one that works on automotive breaks or U Joints. Knife makers who work on folding knives also are likely to have such a press. This is not an inexpensive piece of equipment, so the casual balisong enthusiast is probably not going to run out and buy one just to have around.
I have been trying to locate a custom maker who will disassemble them for a modest fee as a regular service. This explains why I currently have only one user 42 in the house. The rest are all off serving as experimental lab rats for various makers who are learning to take them apart.
My understanding is that Benchmade will disassemble one for you for a modest fee to facilitate colorizing the handles. However, this is a disruption to their production process. Between the labor to do the job and the extra work to keep track of the thing, pack it up etc., plus shipping to return it to you, I suspect that they'll have to charge $10-15 for this service and even at that rate, it'll be barely a break-even for them.
This seems like a rip-off, but think of this: GM will sell you a brand new car for about $30,000. But, if the water pump (a fairly simple and small part of the car) breaks, you'll probably pay about $300, 1% of the car's new price) to have that pump replaced. If you went to a parts store and bought all the parts individually and took 'em to a mechanic and had him assemble the same car for you from scratch, between parts and labor, I'll bet you'd pay a hundred thousand bucks before you had a finished car. This is the magic of mass production and of a factory process flow. This is what Henry Ford discovered (though he really didn't invent it just was among the first to really impliment it).
When you disrupt that factory flow, it's not as efficent and things cost a lot more.
It seems silly to think that you can buy a brand new BM42 for about $125, and yet if you send it back to BM to be disassembled, you'll pay $5 for the shipping to get it to them, probably $15 for the labor to disassemble it, and then $5 for the shipping to get it back. Then, once it's colored, you'll have to spend $5 more to ship it back to BM, another $15 for the reassembly, and $5 for the shipping to get it back. That's $50, that's 40% of the cost of the knife, just for assembly and disassembly. But, that's the facts Jack. For your $50, you get to have the work done by a factory technician who was trained by the folks who designed the knife originally and who has done thousands of 'em already using calibrated, purpose-built factory equipment that BM has invested considerably in.
Still seems like a lot, though, $30 just to press out a few pins and then put 'em back. You know that both processes together won't take six minutes. So, is BM making $300/hour for this work? No. The costs to BM start the moment the postman drops off your knife. Their receiving clerk has to open the package, figure out what's up with this one, fill out a work order, enter it into the tracking system, send the knife to the service department and send your payment to the accounting department. The accounting department then has to make a record of your payment and handle your check or process a credit card transaction. Meanwhile, the knife and paperwork have to be physically taken to the shop by someone. There, the work is done and the materials tracked. The parts are then sent to the shipping department (again, somebody has to move those parts and that person earns a paycheck too). The shipping department then packs the parts appropriately, prints a shipping label, weighs the box, arranges shipping, etc., and makes sure that the box gets picked up by the next shipper. Before the box leaves the factory, somebody had to update the records to indicate that it was shipped and record the tracking numbers, etc. Between disassembly and reassembly, I'll bet that a man-hour of labor gets put into your knife in the factory. So, $30 isn't unreasonable at all.
As for sharpening the false edge and making it into a swedge, I haven't tried it yet, but I think a person could do it nicely with a jig-based sharpening system such as a Gatco Edgemate. It would take a lot of work, plan on an hour and plan on a sore shoulder the next day, but you could do it.
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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
[This message has been edited by Gollnick (edited 09-14-2000).]
Thanks in advance from all the help that you guys and gals provide!
