- Joined
- Jan 26, 2007
- Messages
- 2,339
On one of the "show your swayback" threads, Doug Add posted this interesting little guy. I thought it was a neat little knife, I did a little of googling, tracked down what it was, and ordered one. It came today. The knife is apparently manufactured by a division of a furniture company in Baltimore named S. F. Simmonds & Sons Furnituremakers, from what I gather on the website. There's nothing stamped on the blade, but the manufacturer's site states that "the blade is carbon steel hardened to Rc 54-56, with a length of 2.25". I'm guessing they get the blades from somewhere instead of making them in-house, but that's just speculation. The scales are rosewood with brass pins, and the bolsters are nickel silver. It also has brass liners.
The knife arrived very nicely packaged, wrapped in tissue inside a nice cardboard box inside a plastic sleeve inside bubble wrap inside the envelope (haha). I blurred out the name and address of the vendor so as to not break forum rules:
My initial impressions were positive, but then I took a closer look and found a few things that needed to be addressed. First, I noticed that the blade pretty much completely rubbed one side of the liners. I initially thought of contacting the company about it, but then I figured heck, it was a pretty inexpensive knife, maybe I can try to fix this and learn a little something. I remembered reading this post about DIY krinking, so I got out my tools and gave it a try. While not perfectly centered (I didn't want to push my luck), the blade is now more or less in the middle of the channel, off the liner and not rubbing anywhere. Score!
However, this correction caused the blade pin to loosen and gave me some blade wobble. Back to the hammer! I sandwiched the bolsters between a couple pieces of thin wood and gave it a couple hits. Blade play fixed. Next, to make sure the knife didn't spread again later and to get rid of the slightly raised pin on one side that I created by doing this, I repeened that side of the pin. I completed this part of the job by sanding the bolsters with fine paper to smooth them out a bit more and remove a couple little dings I put in them with the earlier steps (rookie errors), so they are a little more satiny now than in the pics.
As a last step before I left the garage, I applied a little furniture oil to the rosewood to pretty it up a bit.
My last point about the knife is that came butter-knife dull. It took me a half-hour on the Sharpmaker to get a decent edge on it, and I still have one small spot that is not to my satisfaction.
Despite the work I did on it, I really do like the knife, especially considering its price and what I ended up learning from it. Now I'll put it in my pocket and see how it works for a while. When the light is better tomorrow, I'll try to remember to take an "after" pic or two.
The knife arrived very nicely packaged, wrapped in tissue inside a nice cardboard box inside a plastic sleeve inside bubble wrap inside the envelope (haha). I blurred out the name and address of the vendor so as to not break forum rules:
My initial impressions were positive, but then I took a closer look and found a few things that needed to be addressed. First, I noticed that the blade pretty much completely rubbed one side of the liners. I initially thought of contacting the company about it, but then I figured heck, it was a pretty inexpensive knife, maybe I can try to fix this and learn a little something. I remembered reading this post about DIY krinking, so I got out my tools and gave it a try. While not perfectly centered (I didn't want to push my luck), the blade is now more or less in the middle of the channel, off the liner and not rubbing anywhere. Score!
However, this correction caused the blade pin to loosen and gave me some blade wobble. Back to the hammer! I sandwiched the bolsters between a couple pieces of thin wood and gave it a couple hits. Blade play fixed. Next, to make sure the knife didn't spread again later and to get rid of the slightly raised pin on one side that I created by doing this, I repeened that side of the pin. I completed this part of the job by sanding the bolsters with fine paper to smooth them out a bit more and remove a couple little dings I put in them with the earlier steps (rookie errors), so they are a little more satiny now than in the pics.
As a last step before I left the garage, I applied a little furniture oil to the rosewood to pretty it up a bit.
My last point about the knife is that came butter-knife dull. It took me a half-hour on the Sharpmaker to get a decent edge on it, and I still have one small spot that is not to my satisfaction.
Despite the work I did on it, I really do like the knife, especially considering its price and what I ended up learning from it. Now I'll put it in my pocket and see how it works for a while. When the light is better tomorrow, I'll try to remember to take an "after" pic or two.
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