Has anyone ever tried this...

Z

Zip7

Joined
Dec 25, 2006
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I have a nice bulldog stag stockman that I like. As with a lot of german knives, the rivets aren't ground down flush with the handles. I was thinking of honing or filing down the rivets somewhat. It's just the two end ones not the center one.

Anybody done this before?
 
Lots of people have ruined good knives doing what you propose. The rivet heads are there to hold the scales on. You will also ruin any collectibility the knife may have.
Bill
 
I'm fixing to do it when my EKA H8 arrives....IF the pins are protruding and I don;t like them. I can handle any resultant loosening of the scales, IF that occurrs. Collectibility could well be an issue though, although probably not with the EKA. The "use" I give it will probably degrade any collectibility beyond what filing down the pins would do.
 
The bullet-headed rivets are meant to be 'bullet-headed' and to sit proud of the stag. If you grind off all the top then the scales may fall off.
If they get in the way on a user, then a bit of careful work with a small fine file can make them less prominent. Flattening the protruding tops works well.
On my German stag knives I can't even feel the rivets. Maybe because the stag is so rough!
Greg
 
If I get a good knife, I use it, so I'm not worried much about collectibility. If it's pretty, and I like it, and fit and finish are good, it goes in the pocket, no matter how otherwise collectible it is. I have shot the value of many a collectible slippie to hell. I'm not ashamed... I come from a long line of people who use good slipjoints to skin critters and open boxes and whatnot.

I was really wondering if it would cause the scales to loosen up, and it appears it will, so I just honed on them a bit and took a little bite off the offending rivets.
 
You can't peen it from one side only-the rear has to be supported. If it is not, you can drive the pins down, making them protrude through the liner.
Bill
 
the head of the rivet is the part that does all the work. If you wanted to cut that down, you'd have to then flare the hole and peen the pin flush to hold the scales. Of course, this would possibly fracture the stag, and is probably why the rivets were applied the way they were.
 
If you try to peen without proper setup like DeShivs is saying, you can also crack the scales.

As far as the scales coming loose because the heads have been filed off, that I couldn;t disagree with. So long as you expect that might be a likely result, you'll be ok. You'll need to remove the offending scale (or both, even better), get the old epoxy off, clean and/or etch the metal, and epoxy them back down. The pins (now headless) themselves will add glue "surface" when re-gluing the scales.

All of this work could be avoided by not messing witht he rivets, but if you want to remove the rivet heads, I think you certainly can without too much fuss. As I said, I'll do it to my EKA if the protruding rivets bother me and I won;t sweat the work involved.
 
Natch's suggestion is good... but be careful to not slip and damage/crack a scale of course. Also, peening may swell or snap the rivet, causing the loose scales you'd risk by filing. I'd go gently, with a broad punch as opposed to using the peen itself.

You should be able to file down the dome of the rivet without risking the scale loosening or the rivet failing if you just file the top inside of the dome, and don't file all the way to the outside circumference of it, if that makes sense. If your filing doesn't impact/reach the perimeter of the rivet head it should be fine.

......tip of rivet dome, file this down--> xxxx
.................................................xxxxxxxxxx
....................only file to here--> xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.....................................______xxxxxxxxxxxxxx________ <---scale surface

make sense?
 
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