Modified my first knife: A spyderco Southard

[kidcongo]

Here or some photos of my first attempt to pimp a knife. I am an electrician and found a very old piece of Micarta (which was first made as an electrical insulator) in our shop. It is the natural colour this material becomes after many years. I decided to try my luck making a scale for my southard. This material was very thin so I could not counter-sink the screws without it cracking so I tried something different and flattened the screw heads instead. With this thickness of Micarta, both sides of the knife are now the same thickness. Here is a list of what I did (as many others have before):

- made custom scale and overtravel stop out of very thin Micarta
- redesigned scale to remove cut-out for spyder hole
- redesigned scale to eliminate lanyard hole in Micarta scale
- removed lanyard tube
- filed the screws flatter to make them more flush (to make up for no counter-sinking)
- took burr off the edge of the pocket clip, and applied an hammer finish / stonewash / scratch'n'buff finish to the pocket clip

The knife is now slim, and has a nice warm colour. It is by no means perfect, but I'm really happy with the results.

 

[mattmanyam]

Nice!

I really like the color scheme/contrast of the Ti and "authentic" Micarta... good choice.

 

[WorkingEdge]

Congrats on a beautiful pimping job!

 

[Barman1]

Clean

 

[kidcongo]

Matt, Working edge, Barman,

Thanks! Glad you like it.

 

[morgaj1]

Great job!

 

[Battle Proof]

Looks great. Nice work.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[RayseM]

I like it a lot too. Inspiring me to try my hand at some refinements. Nicely done.

 

[Officer's Match]

I like how slim that makes it. Very good job.

 

[dr_fosg8]

Excellent job. The first thought I had when I handle one was, the scale is aweful thick. Looks like that is about perfect.

 

[dcmartin]

Very nice work!

 

[tactical45]

Think I just became a Southard fan. Good job! ... Now to go look for one

 

[Ken44]

That looks really good !
I love the micarta and the pocket clip looks much better as well.

 

[four_shore]

looks great.

im still patiently awaiting the time where people stop calling knife modifying "pimping".

labels aside, great work..

 

[dr_fosg8]

OP, I used to work in a coil factory and the r&d guy made most of his own clamps and testing mounts and the material he used he called bacalite(sp). I wonder if micarta is the same material? It looks quite similar.

 

[kidcongo]

OP, I used to work in a coil factory and the r&d guy made most of his own clamps and testing mounts and the material he used he called bacalite(sp). I wonder if micarta is the same material? It looks quite similar.

no Bakelite is an old plastic-like materials that cannot be drilled or cut easily. It was typically molded from what I know if it. Micarta is made from fabric (cotton / linen / paper ect) that is soaked in resin. It is very strong due to the fibres it contains, and also was designed not to absorb moisture or be damages by heat or oil (both very important in electrical applications). I think the bakelite would crack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micarta

 

[JulianHayes]

Really nice work! I love that color combination too, and am partial to micarta. Congrats on a really good job. I like the Southard a bit more now too..

 

[kidcongo]

Thankyou everyone for your support on this "Modified" knife (not pimped....thanks Four_Shore....i guess I agree)

I thought I'd give a little break-down of how I made this scale in case it helps other newbs like myself take a chance on modding their knife (wish I had taken some pictures of the process but didn't think to at the time....too excited and busy).

- I realized I could never make an exact fit unless the scale was attached to the Ti liner slab. I'm just not that good and I don't have a CNC.

- So I made a very rough cut-out of the shape and screwed the rough Micarta slab to the TI liner slab by drilling our the three little screw holes on the back of the handle , and fitting the screws in place one at a time so everything was perfectly lined up. Then I did the same for the pivot hole.

- With the rough micarta screwed firmly to the Ti reinforcing slab, I worked the edged of the micarta back and forth on some really coarse sandpaper taped down to my workbench, holding the slab in my hand and rubbing the edge against the flat sandpaper surface. I used some rough files as well and a sanding drum on a Dremel to do the convex curves (keeping well away at this point from the Ti liner).

-Once the edge of the micarta approached the edge of the Ti, I switched to using a small flat and half-round jewelers (hobbiest) files and patiently took off the rest of the micarta until the file just barely scraped against the TI.

- I removed any scratches from the edge of the TI and smoothed the edge of the Micarta using a fine-grit foam sanding block.

- I chamfered the edge of the micarta with a small flat file, and then polished the edge of both the Micarta and the Ti with a fine-grit foam sanding block, until they were smooth and perfect (the sanding block only removed Micarta....the Ti just took a shine).

- I polished the end of the lockbar Ti slab to match with the fine foam sanding block. The flat surface of the Micarta was polished with the foam sanding block. It is very tough stuff. The fine grit sandpaper just gives it a "satin" rather than shiney look.

I forgot to mention that the Spyderhole still works fine to open the knife if you do not want to flip it. I never really liked the double-cutaway on the original G10 slab, so I deleted it. Others have done this as well. With the thinner slab, you can easily dig your thumb into the hole. it's about as concealed as it is on the Native 5:

A detail of the flattened screw heads (these screws are soft metal. They file easily and I polished the surface on a foam sanding block). Basically I just took off the top, and the sharp edges, but left enough meat in the screw head that you can still use a tool on them.

One more shot of the thinner profile of the knife. You can see how the old Spyderhole cut-out is covered:

 

[theoriginalspaceman]

Looks great! Nice job. Love the muted orange color, it really works.

 

[amen74]

Not much more to say. Great mod!