Hi everyone! I was really hoping to delay this post until I had totally finished this project but I'm like 90+% done and bored at school so I'm just going to put it out! First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Luke and I'm a junior electrical engineering student at the University of South Carolina (lol @ solidorange! 
). One of my best friends here at school carried a Kershaw I can't remember which model for years and I always toyed with the idea of getting a carry for myself. Last may I picked up a Benchmade 890 that I really like and I've had the bug ever since. I got my first Skyline in January (an orange) and I got lucky and managed to get a red stonewashed one from BladeHQ. I got the idea for this project because we have a lot of guns in my family including some really nice ones with hand checkered stocks and blued barrels, etc and I really love that look. I'm not really a craftsman per se, in fact usually I'm kind of a hack (more of a math guy) but I thought the Skyline grips are very simple and flat so I bet I could pull it off. I did some research on bluing and concluded it wasn't going to work on stainless steel so I abandoned that part but I kept on with the wood scales. I picked up some walnut on the cheap from a knife parts supplier on the interweb and got to work!
I bought 2 pairs of 3/8ths thick scale material and cut them in half which conveniently makes 4 knives worth of material! Nice!
I clamped my scale to the wood and cut it out roughly with a skinny saw. There's a word for this saw but I forget what my dad called it...
Rough is right!
The first test fit of the back scale! Imagine my joy when it fit!
I made the hex hole for the pivot base by drilling a very shallow hole with a bit the diameter of the width of the hex then making some points where the hex angles would go in the scale using a tiny burr on my dremel stylus. I had to be super careful. Even then it didn't seat all the way so I supported the liner and scale around the pivot in my vise and squished the pivot base into the scale by cranking the vise down. This worked better than I expected!
Holes drilled for the front scale
Woo! Both scales slightly better than roughed out but lots of work to go. Check out those saw teeth marks :X
After some work from 65 up to 600 grit sand paper they're pretty smooth. I did some more work and got them better than this later on
First coat of TruOil gun stock finish
First coat drying up
After like 6 coats? Super shiny
Buffed up with #0000 steel wool
Back on
Upside down...whoops
Now the scary stuff...drew master lines in marker for diamonds 3x longer than their width, btw sorry for sketchy pics...my phone isn't brilliant in awkward light and I'm no photog
Oofff...should've practiced more on something harder than pine before messing up my hard work...I'll try to improve this side this week.
Practice making perfect, or maybe just better. I accidentally went too far down towards the end of the scale. I wanted to have a larger smooth triangle portion here. Oh well. It's a prototype.
Now here's the front side after a lot of work. You can tell I got more comfortable with the hardwood on this side and I marked my end triangles so I didn't checker beyond where I wanted to by accident again
And here it is after the finishing of the diamonds. There are a good few I couldn't get the point up because I just didn't have the patience and my wrist was killing me. The borders don't look too hot either...
Another coat of TruOil to finish the checked area
So the backside I haven't finished to the level of the front side but I did drill out the holes for my FREE (yeah! free! they just gave it to me!) deep carry ZT clip and put that on. Wayy better than the regular Kershaw clip for sure and so easy to do.
Behold! The nearly finished product! I'll actually finish it probably this week then Saturday I'll cut out some new ones and make another set, but better!
I hope you like it! Thanks for reading,
Luke
). One of my best friends here at school carried a Kershaw I can't remember which model for years and I always toyed with the idea of getting a carry for myself. Last may I picked up a Benchmade 890 that I really like and I've had the bug ever since. I got my first Skyline in January (an orange) and I got lucky and managed to get a red stonewashed one from BladeHQ. I got the idea for this project because we have a lot of guns in my family including some really nice ones with hand checkered stocks and blued barrels, etc and I really love that look. I'm not really a craftsman per se, in fact usually I'm kind of a hack (more of a math guy) but I thought the Skyline grips are very simple and flat so I bet I could pull it off. I did some research on bluing and concluded it wasn't going to work on stainless steel so I abandoned that part but I kept on with the wood scales. I picked up some walnut on the cheap from a knife parts supplier on the interweb and got to work!I bought 2 pairs of 3/8ths thick scale material and cut them in half which conveniently makes 4 knives worth of material! Nice!
I clamped my scale to the wood and cut it out roughly with a skinny saw. There's a word for this saw but I forget what my dad called it...
Rough is right!
The first test fit of the back scale! Imagine my joy when it fit!
I made the hex hole for the pivot base by drilling a very shallow hole with a bit the diameter of the width of the hex then making some points where the hex angles would go in the scale using a tiny burr on my dremel stylus. I had to be super careful. Even then it didn't seat all the way so I supported the liner and scale around the pivot in my vise and squished the pivot base into the scale by cranking the vise down. This worked better than I expected!
Holes drilled for the front scale
Woo! Both scales slightly better than roughed out but lots of work to go. Check out those saw teeth marks :X
After some work from 65 up to 600 grit sand paper they're pretty smooth. I did some more work and got them better than this later on
First coat of TruOil gun stock finish
First coat drying up
After like 6 coats? Super shiny
Buffed up with #0000 steel wool
Back on
Upside down...whoops
Now the scary stuff...drew master lines in marker for diamonds 3x longer than their width, btw sorry for sketchy pics...my phone isn't brilliant in awkward light and I'm no photog
Oofff...should've practiced more on something harder than pine before messing up my hard work...I'll try to improve this side this week.
Practice making perfect, or maybe just better. I accidentally went too far down towards the end of the scale. I wanted to have a larger smooth triangle portion here. Oh well. It's a prototype.
Now here's the front side after a lot of work. You can tell I got more comfortable with the hardwood on this side and I marked my end triangles so I didn't checker beyond where I wanted to by accident again
And here it is after the finishing of the diamonds. There are a good few I couldn't get the point up because I just didn't have the patience and my wrist was killing me. The borders don't look too hot either...
Another coat of TruOil to finish the checked area
So the backside I haven't finished to the level of the front side but I did drill out the holes for my FREE (yeah! free! they just gave it to me!) deep carry ZT clip and put that on. Wayy better than the regular Kershaw clip for sure and so easy to do.
Behold! The nearly finished product! I'll actually finish it probably this week then Saturday I'll cut out some new ones and make another set, but better!
I hope you like it! Thanks for reading,
Luke
