newbee trying repairs

[Colorado Pete]

OK, I broke down and bought a book on Pocket Knife Repair. And since I have a lot of tools, and am decent at working with metal, I think I can do this.

However, it seems to me that someone, somewhere probably has a business selling pocket knife parts... taking old knives apart and selling the pieces. If you know of good used knife parts sellers, please send me an email. Getting the knife apart and back together is probably easy. Pin stock for the rivets I probably already have.

The little tool for burnishing the ends of pins--well I think I can make that, unless someone has a source this also.

My first project is a pice-of-crap rusty three-blade. Wish me luck, and send me an address of parts-sellers if you got one.

emailpete@iname.com

 

[Laceration]

knifekits.com has knife parts. They're not used but might be helpful to you. Good luck.

 

[Ripper]

...The little tool for burnishing the ends of pins--well I think I can make that, unless someone has a source this also....

I belive you are describing a "head spinner". There is one on this page.

You can find many old, worn, broken pocket knives listed for auctiom on eBay that would be a good source for parts.

Good luck on your project.

Regards,
Greg

http://gbrannon.bizhat.com/

 

[STR]

First of all. Good luck with your project. I go junking quite a bit with the wife around my own area where I live. Almost religiously my wife prints off the yard sales and garage sales and whatever estate sales are listed every weekend on line in our local newspaper. I have bought many old knives this way for anywhere from $.25 to a few dollars. My last one that I made I used the old springs from a three blade, cut out new liners of titanium and for pins I found some old stainless steel pop rivets at the same yard sale where I picked up the donor knife for the springs.

The old pins didn't rate for reuse so I made my own using the .$50 box of stainless rivets. I used some seasoned pecan for the handles that I had for fire wood, corn cob jigged them to give it an old time look and then made up some brass overlays for the stainless pins to give it that old time 'birdseye' rivet look.

It turned out ok. I made up a leather punch for it and a screwdriver and even put a bottle opener on it. For the main blade I used an old donor kitchen blade of the right thickness.

You should consider this. I have three like minded friends and we do a lot of recycling of old knives, modifying them, rebuilding, making. Oh hell, we just play cutlery all day. I have upgraded and rebuilt folders for a long time as well as made my own from scratch and so have my friends.

Feel free to come visit us at my homepage listed in my profile. My friend Dirk can also teach anyone wanting to learn more about this stuff but we also learn from people like you so come on by and post your pics and join in and say howdy. We love having new guests and meeting new 'backyard knife mechanics' like ourselves.

Oh yeah, here is the knife I was talking about. The only multi blade I've ever tackled.

And here is one Dirk and I did together and then sold in an auction with all the proceeds going to the knife forum where we have our homepage.

Built from donor materials about like the one above.

 

[Colorado Pete]

The book I read was the Complete Book of Pocketknife Repair. Thanks to the ideas on where to get parts.

The book seems to have a lot of good information in it, except the author doesn't use the same terminology on the diagrams in the back--which makes it a little confusing. I'll start hunting around at our local flea-market. I'm sure that a lot of small pocketknives go unnoticed. I already have much of the smaller parts--pins for rivets, scrap metal for blades, etc. I can also probably make some blades since I have a variety of thinner scrap metal lying around--although I'm not sure what hardness they are. I'll have to be careful in thier heat treatment.

So STR: how did you put the nailnick into the blade? I was thinking of using a Dremel tool. My guess: Did you drill a series of holes and then even the slot with a small file?

 

[STR]

It may be hard to see. But I used a slim 3/4" cut off wheel on a dremmel and went all the way through both the blade and screw driver tool on the three blade and all the way through on the single blade. No holes were drilled to help I just took the cut off through it letting the wheel do the work and occassionally dipping the blade in a cool cup of water if it got the slightest big warm to my bare hand. Then I smoothed it out with a fine diamond burr to get rid of the edge and any burrs left from the slice..

All of these cut off discs/wheels and diamond burrs are available at Lowes or Sears, but mine come from my background in dentistry. I have a ton of that stuff around since retiring so I just use it. Truthfully the ones from Sears and Lowes seem to be a little thicker and they appear to cut faster but produce more heat also.

I don't claim to make the finest high quality pieces of art and I am nothing more than I claim to be. Just a guy that likes dabbling in cutlery making homemade working knives. My knives are beaters and users not pocket jewelry as you can plainly see. This other single blade slip joint I built here in the thumbnail pic should show the thumb slot a bit better than the darker one with the blades closed. The first one of these I did was because I had seen a Scagel repro that had it and I liked it. It makes them ambidextrous also which is another plus.

EDIT: I thought of two more to show you also. I have also done what I call a 'dogbone' slot where once the slot is cut out and pretty even on both sides I use a tapered diamond burr to round out a hole on each end of the thumb slot.

And I have also used the same thin cut off wheels to make a slot but not all the way through, and then use a drum shaped stone the same or close to the same size as the slot length and gently grind down until it is flush with the slot and uniform looking. Then I use a cratex drum to finish that out so the lines are not so course.

Just ideas but certainly not the only way to do this. These are just the unique way I do mine when I do them. I prefer a thumb stud when I can do it. I guess if I was selling these I'd have spent more time to make them look more 'spitshined' but truthfully I give away more than I sell. I just do it for the hobby and it keeps me busy enough to where I'm not idle all the time.

Both these black ones are two of my from scratch folders using old Russell Green River blades. They were both done at the same time. I kept the one with the thumb stud and later sold it, and I gave the other one with the nail knick to my good friend Dirk. Just like the one pictured in my signiture these are my Whittlejack Wharncliff models that have been popular for me. There ar a lot of Wharncliff blade lovers out there just like me. I use them for carving quite a bit and love the high carbon Russell steel.

 

[Colorado Pete]

STR: nice knives - I like the fact that you make them to use--not just nice to look at. And you have a great sense of wood color. I will now try to replace the sides of my broken knives with wood since yours came out so well. However that will have to wait until after I try to make my first blade... it's off to the scrap metal shop tomorrow to buy the right widths (thicknesses) and start scribing outlines.

BTW: should I stick with the previous blade design (which sounds easier to do--duplicating the shape of an existing broken blade) or go directly to a shape I like?