I have had requests from several people to do a thread on how I do the hidden lanyard loops, so here it is!
I had customers asking for lanyard loops, but I have never really cared for the tube style loops… so I wanted to find a different way to do it. I remembered seeing one of S.A. Custom Knives blades with a hidden lanyard loop, and sent him an email. He was kind enough to explain the basic process to me, and this thread shows the process I have developed from that. Shane may have a better way to do it, so please feel free to chime in!
The basic principle of it is that there is a pin in the butt of the knife that the scales sandwich in place. You can then thread a lanyard around the pin and get something looking like this…
Ok, so first off, drilling holes. I drill my normal pin holes… but keep in mind you will need room for an extra pin, so you may have to move your rear pin forward. My hidden pin is ⅛” Carbon Fiber, so next I drill the hole for that in the butt of the knife (see picture). This hole is used as a guide and will eventually be cut out.
The reason I do that is because now I can take my scales, put the pins though them, set the knife on top of it, and I know exactly where the corresponding hole in the handle needs to be. I have tried just marking the hole and then drilling it, and things never fit together properly and this results in frustration and swearing. So this is what I find to be the easy way to do it. Make note, this hole is drilled about a 1/16” deep into the handle… DO NOT DRILL ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE HANDLE… which I have accidentally done before because I was not paying attention to what I was doing. It's a surefire way to ruin handle material
. You want it deep enough to hold the pin, but not so deep that you are going to sand down to it and expose it while shaping the handle, which I have also done. Then do the same to your other scale.
Now that your holes are drilled, you can complete cutting the slot for the lanyard. On the larger knives pictured, the slot I made was a bit larger than I should have made it. I thought I was going to use a larger cord, but didn’t, so it ended up looking a bit wider than I would have liked it to. I use a dremel/ chainsaw file to fine tune the slot. You do not want any sharp edges where the lanyard could snag. I did not take a picture when I had it completely smoothed out, but all corners are rounded and sharp edges gone.
Now when you put the pieces together, you should have something looking like this.
Shaping the butt…
Now threading the cord around the pin can be kind of tricky. I typically loop heavy duty fishing line through the slot and around the pin, tie the line to the lanyard cord, and use the line to drag the cord through. That is one thing I haven't quite figured out yet, is threading it! But that is the most user friendly method I have found so far. All said and done, it looks something like this…
I hope that helps, please feel free to ask any questions or to chime in with your method of doing it!
-Nichole Lindstrand
I had customers asking for lanyard loops, but I have never really cared for the tube style loops… so I wanted to find a different way to do it. I remembered seeing one of S.A. Custom Knives blades with a hidden lanyard loop, and sent him an email. He was kind enough to explain the basic process to me, and this thread shows the process I have developed from that. Shane may have a better way to do it, so please feel free to chime in!
The basic principle of it is that there is a pin in the butt of the knife that the scales sandwich in place. You can then thread a lanyard around the pin and get something looking like this…
Ok, so first off, drilling holes. I drill my normal pin holes… but keep in mind you will need room for an extra pin, so you may have to move your rear pin forward. My hidden pin is ⅛” Carbon Fiber, so next I drill the hole for that in the butt of the knife (see picture). This hole is used as a guide and will eventually be cut out.
The reason I do that is because now I can take my scales, put the pins though them, set the knife on top of it, and I know exactly where the corresponding hole in the handle needs to be. I have tried just marking the hole and then drilling it, and things never fit together properly and this results in frustration and swearing. So this is what I find to be the easy way to do it. Make note, this hole is drilled about a 1/16” deep into the handle… DO NOT DRILL ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE HANDLE… which I have accidentally done before because I was not paying attention to what I was doing. It's a surefire way to ruin handle material
. You want it deep enough to hold the pin, but not so deep that you are going to sand down to it and expose it while shaping the handle, which I have also done. Then do the same to your other scale.
Now that your holes are drilled, you can complete cutting the slot for the lanyard. On the larger knives pictured, the slot I made was a bit larger than I should have made it. I thought I was going to use a larger cord, but didn’t, so it ended up looking a bit wider than I would have liked it to. I use a dremel/ chainsaw file to fine tune the slot. You do not want any sharp edges where the lanyard could snag. I did not take a picture when I had it completely smoothed out, but all corners are rounded and sharp edges gone.
Now when you put the pieces together, you should have something looking like this.
Shaping the butt…
Now threading the cord around the pin can be kind of tricky. I typically loop heavy duty fishing line through the slot and around the pin, tie the line to the lanyard cord, and use the line to drag the cord through. That is one thing I haven't quite figured out yet, is threading it! But that is the most user friendly method I have found so far. All said and done, it looks something like this…
I hope that helps, please feel free to ask any questions or to chime in with your method of doing it!
-Nichole Lindstrand
Angle grinder and several stroke with half round file will do same job ..............without waste of steel.