Sad shrunken covers.This fella was made to serve his country as a Navy/Coastguard utility knife, those covers are unbecoming. Lets see it we can't restore some of this fella's dignity.
There, now after wearing those worn out utilities he gets to wear his dress whites.
Pic with his brother who went to the Army.
Page of a 1946(?) Catalog I found in another thread showing both knives, Navy knife 3rd from top, Army knife 4th from bottom.
The antler that waited 2 years for this moment.
First I removed the old pieces, found that near the bolsters was little sharp tabs punched from the liner to be the "pins" there. 4 on each side. I simply cut those off with a dremel. Next I cut down the center pin and peened both sides. Then I cut the antler to slightly over length. Then split it with a hacksaw after scoring a center line with the dremel cutoff wheel. I next trimmed the pieces to fit length wise, as you can see the antler was nearly perfect width wise. I used a piece of 100 grit flat on a table to make the back side of my covers flat and flush. I used the dremel to bore divets s on the back side to clear the peened center pin. Then I epoxied and clamped the covers on. After 4 long hours lol, I removed the clamps and used a sanding drum on the dremel to shape the covers. There was a couple small places where due to the size antler I had that the liner was a little proud of the covers. I sanded them flush as well. Sanded my work smooth but being careful to leave the natural scratches and character to the antler. 600 grit, then polished with 1500 grit.
BIG THANKS!! To all the support and encouragement of my fellow porch members.
Special thanks to
@glennbad for modding inspiration, also special thanks to
r8shell
for modding inspiration and for inspiring me to look at knives I might otherwise have passed by. Thanks y'all for giving new life to old blades!
