Lefty Framelock mods.

AngryFish

AngryFish

Joined
Sep 27, 2004
Messages
692
I read somewhere in either this forum or another that you have done work converting framelocks to true left-handed frames. Can you tell me what models you have done this on in the past?

As a lefty who likes true left handed knives it's hard to find anyone outside of a few custom makers who can do this.


Thanks in advance,

James

(EDIT: Just read in the sticky that you are no longer doing the conversions. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm not even sure which knives would be best for this type of modification.)

I will try to get in touch with Reese but do you have any other suggestions as well?


Sorry I accidentally hit edit instead of quote. My bad STR
 
Last edited by a moderator:
AngryFish said:
I read somewhere in either this forum or another that you have done work converting framelocks to true left-handed frames. Can you tell me what models you have done this on in the past?

As a lefty who likes true left handed knives it's hard to find anyone outside of a few custom makers who can do this.


Thanks in advance,

James

(EDIT: Just read in the sticky that you are no longer doing the conversions. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm not even sure which knives would be best for this type of modification.)

I will try to get in touch with Reese but do you have any other suggestions as well?
Click to expand...


Reese is a fine choice. He does great work.

As for the answer to your questions. There are some models that would be problematic for converting. Older Commanders and probably the newer ones would be very difficult if not impossible to pull off and I think it would be very difficult if not impossible on the 14 as well but I'd have to look at the tang again. I recall someone asking me once to do one of those and I backed out thinking I'd just ruin a good knife. All of them are a challenge no doubt but it is possible for some to be converted. I've converted a 15 to a true lefty, at least one 8, maybe two now I'd have to look, and a mini A100 that I recall. Seems like I did a 13 early on too now that I stop to think about it.
 
I would really like to have a conversion done to either a strider PT or SnG. I understand they did a very limited run of leftys and then stopped producing them altogether. I'm always hesitant to contact a custom maker and inquire about if they will take on a conversion like this but I'm incapable of doing it myself and still think of it as a worthy project if the cost isn't totally prohibitive.
 
I've never seen one done. Never looked at one to see if I thought it possible. I would pass on it personally. I do appreciate your asking though.

Mostly the makers look at the knives and think to themselves stuff like, do I really want a to buy a knife and eat something this big if it goes south on me? Most opt out after that. Whenever you venture into this kind of thing you always risk the knife in question to do it no matter who you pick to do the job. Its a very iffy thing to get into doing when you take something pre-existing like that and completely turn it around to something else.

Sometimes it works, most times for me it did fortunately when I did them but then I was very cautious and had a particular way of mapping out all my steps ahead of time, checking and double checking each step I knew I had to take and sometimes even drawing on the knife or making a template copy and trying that first. Then only if all areas met my questions with a yes answer would I proceed to the real deal. One no in the scenario can be enough to throw the entire project and if you find out after you've torn into it because you missed something it can be a real costly mistake for someone both in money and in reputation if people get disgruntled with you and take it public voicing all kinds of negative feedback. Its just more than most want to rock their world over unfortunately.

I am really lucky I guess. Nothing like that ever occurred to me and if anyone was unhappy I am unaware of it. I think some were a bit disappointed once or twice with trying to recoup their investment when they sold some things I did to their specs but honestly, thats a given and in my opinion most should already know that going in. Most are told up front of the risks of the job itself when dealing with me and perhaps I should have been better about detailing the risks of resale losses with some early on. We learned from it if nothing else and even though I can say there are some that left here I did that I wish were better esthetically than they were for various issues all of them are usable and function great and reliably so to me even if one or two areas could be used later for others to learn from to improve symmetry now all you can do is make note of it to hopefully better proceed the next time. All this illustrates the risk of when you dive into modification vs making something of your own from scratch and I present it for you so you can kind of know what probably goes through my mind and perhaps others when it comes to pimping on expensive knives. You go through some TUMS doing this stuff believe me!;)

Thanks
STR
 
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