Modified Production Knives (traditional only)

EngrSorenson said:
How sure are you that’s bloodwood? Looks fantastic regardless, but the open grain looks a lot like Padauk. Bloodwood is very dense, with an obvious but very tight grain.

For comparison, padauk and bloodwood, respectively… now that I look at it… hard to tell apart.
https://imgur.com/YNq5pYv
https://imgur.com/kjYR64S
Click to expand...

I'm fairly certain it's Bloodwood.

I ordered pieces of both Bloodwood and Padauk at the same time and from the same place. The one marked "Bloodwood" is on the left and the one marked "Padauk" is on the right. The knife came from the left one.

HtHJalJ.jpg


As you can see, they are very similar and I understand that they are often confused with each other.

Ultimately, all I can do is go by how they were labeled, since I'd never seen either one before! :rolleyes:

Mark
 
Its a lovely wood Penguin9 and a job well done, adds much soul to the knife.

This is more a charting of my attempts to implant a missing blade in an old JY Cowlishaw sportsmans knife than modifications but hey, maybe you will find it intresting.
It was begging for it imo as was in super condition otherwise. A broken blade makes me sad.



I found a Lockwood bros sterile blade of the correct thickness I had from a delete. I filed the cam, kick and stop same as the Cowlishaw stump. After test fitting it obscured the main blades nick and the spine was high when closed.


After drastically shortening the length, profile and kick it cleared the nick.


Drilled everything out to 2mm. I use steel rivets as a pivot pin. Must try to source nickle silver pins for better authenticity.


Hot apple cider vinegar.


Ready to rock. The wee washers are yet another nice touch on this knife from Mister Cowlishaw.
I "pre peened" one end of the pin in the vice before assembly, a very smart tip I picked up here.
An extra hand was called for in the shape of my daughter to help in assembly. Never enough hands for that.


Gotcha. Phew.
Ground it so one mm was proud and peened it over. The rivets are not stainless thankfully.
The fit in this knife is really very good, once assembled it had no slop or wobble, even without peening.








Unfortunately there was a chip midway down this blade which meant I had to lose some meat off it:( I cant do chipped blades so I'm happy with that.


Saw is still sharp thank god as I dont know how to sharpen it.






The new blade is as snappy as the other tools and I polished the cam surface so its nice and glidey too.
Would have loved to had an original Cowlishaw blade to transplant and nickle silver pins would have been a better touch but am very happy with how this turned out.
Three hours of pure garage fiddling joy and a nice knife at the end of it.
 
ed_is_dead said:
Its a lovely wood Penguin9 and a job well done, adds much soul to the knife.

This is more a charting of my attempts to implant a missing blade in an old JY Cowlishaw sportsmans knife than modifications but hey, maybe you will find it intresting.
It was begging for it imo as was in super condition otherwise. A broken blade makes me sad.



I found a Lockwood bros sterile blade of the correct thickness I had from a delete. I filed the cam, kick and stop same as the Cowlishaw stump. After test fitting it obscured the main blades nick and the spine was high when closed.


After drastically shortening the length, profile and kick it cleared the nick.


Drilled everything out to 2mm. I use steel rivets as a pivot pin. Must try to source nickle silver pins for better authenticity.


Hot apple cider vinegar.


Ready to rock. The wee washers are yet another nice touch on this knife from Mister Cowlishaw.
I "pre peened" one end of the pin in the vice before assembly, a very smart tip I picked up here.
An extra hand was called for in the shape of my daughter to help in assembly. Never enough hands for that.


Gotcha. Phew.
Ground it so one mm was proud and peened it over. The rivets are not stainless thankfully.
The fit in this knife is really very good, once assembled it had no slop or wobble, even without peening.








Unfortunately there was a chip midway down this blade which meant I had to lose some meat off it:( I cant do chipped blades so I'm happy with that.


Saw is still sharp thank god as I dont know how to sharpen it.






The new blade is as snappy as the other tools and I polished the cam surface so its nice and glidey too.
Would have loved to had an original Cowlishaw blade to transplant and nickle silver pins would have been a better touch but am very happy with how this turned out.
Three hours of pure garage fiddling joy and a nice knife at the end of it.
Click to expand...
Really nice work :) Cowlishaw were a quality cutler. Finding Sportsman's and Horseman's knives, in good condition, at a reasonable price, is not easy. You have a great knife there now :) :thumbsup:
 
penguin9 said:
Changed out the black plastic scales on a Sod Buster Jr. I bought a while back. The new scales are Bloodwood and the result is definitely an improvement.

I haven't used this type of wood before. It works a lot like Walnut and doesn't need stabilization. It seems like the sawdust gets everywhere, but it's probably just the bright red color that makes it stand out from all the other dust in the shop.

The actual color is a bit redder than what appears in the pics and I expect it to turn browner over time.

I7a08yVl.jpg


zPuliT3l.jpg


Mark

PS I had to dig pretty far down into the forum to find this thread. Y'all been taking the summer off? :cool:
Click to expand...

not at all! i have some top men working on projects as we speak!
 
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Jack Black said:
Really nice work :) Cowlishaw were a quality cutler. Finding Sportsman's and Horseman's knives, in good condition, at a reasonable price, is not easy. You have a great knife there now :) :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
Thanks, its dense and seems built for the ages, I like the stag and the bolster caps(?) are classy.
What did strike me was the robustness and accuracy of it. Peening this correctly so walk and talk/tightness were right was simply a case of closing it up.
I got lucky matching the basic dimensions for a donor, the blades are stout and nothing with a nail nick where needed could be found.
I have a beautiful (His Majesty) Joseph Rodgers split back (but not really) whittler which is missing a blade I'm eyeing up next to try and fix. The challenge is its a left hand openind sheepsfoot I believe so I've feck all chace of finding one lol.
 
This is a project I started as a follow-up to my earlier penguin knife. That knife came out OK, but it had issues and I wanted to try to do better. This one is started out as a Rough Rider Sunfish. Like the previous knife, the secondary had a pull of 11 (pliers required), so I removed it. The primary blade had a pull of about 9, but I was able to remove material from the inside of the spring and got it down to about a 6. I wanted to make this with a shadow pattern to give more room for the silver inlay, so I removed the bolsters, used Walnut from my yard for the covers and added a birds-eye pivot.

Both this knife and the previous one had a problem with the the blade severely wearing away the metal on the spring when opening and closing. My knowledge and skills are rather lacking in the realm of metalworking; wood is more my thing. I didn't know what to do about it on the first knife, but on this one I figured out that the spring was too soft, so I tried to harden it. After a bunch of trial and error, this succeeded and the knife operates very smoothly and the spring is no longer wearing away.

I also decided early on that I would gift this to my brother-in-law. He and my sister travel and camp extensively out west and I decided to use an image of Monument Valley for the inlay. I developed the line art using a photo that was taken by my niece.

All in all, I'm really happy with this one. I gave it to my brother-in-law yesterday and I think he really likes it, especially since I used his daughter's photo to make it.

RhaSywHl.jpg

oy3f5Hml.jpg

noqwjuWl.jpg


Mark
 
penguin9 said:
This is a project I started as a follow-up to my earlier penguin knife. That knife came out OK, but it had issues and I wanted to try to do better. This one is started out as a Rough Rider Sunfish. Like the previous knife, the secondary had a pull of 11 (pliers required), so I removed it. The primary blade had a pull of about 9, but I was able to remove material from the inside of the spring and got it down to about a 6. I wanted to make this with a shadow pattern to give more room for the silver inlay, so I removed the bolsters, used Walnut from my yard for the covers and added a birds-eye pivot.

Both this knife and the previous one had a problem with the the blade severely wearing away the metal on the spring when opening and closing. My knowledge and skills are rather lacking in the realm of metalworking; wood is more my thing. I didn't know what to do about it on the first knife, but on this one I figured out that the spring was too soft, so I tried to harden it. After a bunch of trial and error, this succeeded and the knife operates very smoothly and the spring is no longer wearing away.

I also decided early on that I would gift this to my brother-in-law. He and my sister travel and camp extensively out west and I decided to use an image of Monument Valley for the inlay. I developed the line art using a photo that was taken by my niece.

All in all, I'm really happy with this one. I gave it to my brother-in-law yesterday and I think he really likes it, especially since I used his daughter's photo to make it.

RhaSywHl.jpg

oy3f5Hml.jpg

noqwjuWl.jpg


Mark
Click to expand...

Love what you did on this one!
 
They are all made from Alox models, so they have a little bit sturdier tools. I just saves the spring and tools and make the rest.
Brass liners and brass rivets. On some I have done a acid wash on the tools and spring. I started out by doing bolsters in raindeer or elk horn, but now I have done one equal end with brass and one in nickel silver. The small single blade is from a Bantam with nickel silver bolster and smoked oak.
The SAK red one is in stabilized poppel and black stained raindeer
 
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Barbababa said:
They are all made from Alox models, so they have a little bit sturdier tools. I just saves the spring and tools and make the rest.
Brass liners and brass rivets. On some I have done a acid wash on the tools and spring. I started out by doing bolsters in raindeer or elk horn, but now I have done one equal end with brass and one in nickel silver. The small single blade is from a Bantam with nickel silver bolster and smoked oak.
The SAK red one is in stabilized poppel and black stained raindeer
Click to expand...
Very nice! I didn't know the tools were any different on the Alox models.

Have you done any with the tools on the back, like the awl or corkscrew? Just wondering how difficult those would be to work with.

Mark
 
penguin9 said:
Very nice! I didn't know the tools were any different on the Alox models.

Have you done any with the tools on the back, like the awl or corkscrew? Just wondering how difficult those would be to work with.

Mark
Click to expand...
Thank you kindly!
No, not done any one like that yet, but I have restored a old knife with tools in the back. It´s pretty much the same work except that the spring is split or double, side by side. In the custom SAK thread there are many mods inkluding tools front and back, have a visit :)

SAK Mods! Post your pics, questions and ideas

Let this be a thread for anyone to show off a Mod they built or had built, ask a question about modding, or share modding ideas and dreams! Hopefully mods fall into their own category of multi tool/multi purpose knives so this can stay here and not be moved to tinkering. here’s a few to get...
www.bladeforums.com www.bladeforums.com
 
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