My BM 42 Modifications

M

McMahan

Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Messages
127
Hey guys, I am new to the forums and thought you might want to see some of the alterations I made to my BM 42 over the weekend. I was tired of the rounded tang on my 42, so I took my Dremel and cut the curves into a point. I also decided that the horns had to go also since I don’t really use them in any of my manipulations, so I chopped those off too while I was there. I sanded the cut areas off with some wet sandpaper I found laying around the garage which gave a polished look to the sides of the blade. Finally, I took some Flitz polishing compound to the blade to give it a matching, shiny finish. Of course, to do all of this stuff I had to disassemble the blade from the handles, but it wasn’t too hard to do with a hammer, vise, and about a ¾ inch piece of coathanger. All in all, I was very happy with the results even though it probably ended up taking the better part of 5 hours.

http://members.tripod.com/coccis/balisong.htm
 
McMahan,

That looks pretty slick. Do you have any pics of the sides where the metal was ground off and you polished it, just as an idea of how well it came out from that angle?
 
Hey guys, thanks for the kind words. Don, I put some new pics up showing the polished areas. It ended up looking a lot better than I expected it to.
 
Nice. This shows that you can accomplish a lot with just a Dremel tool (which is not very expensive). Different people seem to have different results pounding the pins out.

Some people report that their's come out fairly easily. Others report that they can't get 'em out with sledge hammer.

I suspect that this is due to parts tollerance stackup. The holes in the handles are W +/- X inches. The diameter of the pin is Y +/- Z inches. If you happen to get a 42 where BOTH holes in BOTH handles are W+X inches, i.e. on the large end of acceptible, and where BOTH pins are Y-Z inches, i.e. on the small end of acceptible, they come out fairly easily. But, if any of your four holes is W-X or if either of your two pins is Y+Z, then it'll be tough. And you happen to get one with all four holes small and all four pins large, well, you're gonna have a tough time. This is normal in any machined parts. There's always a tollerance and there's always stackup. The engineer has to make sure that the looses possible fit is still tight enough for the purpose and the tightest possible fit is still manufacturable.

Anyway, nice videos on your site too. Very clear.
 
McMahan,

Very nice, thanks for the update (most people don't do requests!) Very nice job indeed. "MMTMatrix" made a Latchless once and was lucky in that his BM42 showed no voids in the Ti.

Between both Balisongs, his and yours, as well as using torches to alter the color of the Ti, it's pretty neat what can be done at home with some patience and an eye towards detail.

Nice vids too.
 
Gollnick,
It seems like I was one of the lucky ones when it comes to taking the pins out. I got my 42 not too long after they were released, so maybe that has something to do with it. I also need a T-9 torx to take the screws out, and I see that a lot of other people only need a T-8. That would lead me to believe that maybe Benchmade has made some minor alterations over time that might make it more difficult to completely disassemble the knife.

Don,
Taking some new pics was no problem (I should have put them up in the first place). I just got a new video camera/camcorder the other day and have been putting it through its paces, so I was glad to to it.


I have put some new videos up, but they look pretty choppy to me. If anyone has any ideas about how I could smooth them out, please feel free to comment. They seem to look a lot better when I play them back on the camera versus my computer. I’m thinking maybe I should try a different compression method.
 
Ok, I’ve edited some of my bali footage together (btest3-btest6) so that it is clearer and smoother now. I ended up changing it into .avi compression which has made it bigger but the quality is better than before. The whole clip is now 34 seconds and weighs in at 14.8 MB. So if you want to give it a look, you can go to my modification page in the first thread or click on this direct link:

http://MCMBR143@doc.bus.orst.edu/students/m/mcmbr143/bali/NewBali.avi
 
NaTeDoGG,
I haven’t really named any of my moves, because as I’m sure you know bali terminology is confusing enough as it is. Depending on who you talk to, the same move can be called ten different things. So in an effort to promote a unified naming convention, I went to Clay’s site and found something just like it, he calls it a Vertical Pass. Here is the link:

http://www.balisongxtreme.com/baliplanet2/beginners/Vpass/v-pass.htm

Now the only problem we have is naming the moves people made up that aren’t on his site.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top