Here is a bit of info sent to me from Frank. Scales are honey pickbone, blue liners, and full filework compliment to
blade, liners, and backspring.
The following message was received after I asked for the price of this beautiful knife, I'm passing this on for Frank!
This knife wound up being an economic disaster for me time wise,
first, the mechanical scale side had to be routed out to fit a floating plate that is mortised into the underside of the moving scale, this floating plate is the linkage that engages the backspring by lifting it up to release the blade in the locked open position. My first obstacle was to figure out how to route the underside to fit this plate like in the original scale, and it had to be a perfect fit! The floating plate takes up nearly 90% of the width of the scale, and about 40% of the length and that leaves very thin sidewalls, so that when I grind the profile down to the liners the last thing I want to run into is the hollowed out area underneath the scale and it had to be flush with the underside of the moving scale. The plan and execution of those steps worked! Then there was the extremely tedious task of hand sanding the finger circle shapes at the opening, two sides no less! Then filing all the metal parts was another tedious step (those fuc--- finger grooves!) Then after all the parts of the knife were made and finished it had to go together! Again more obstacles, the front scale had to be freely moving and as flat against the liner as possible, the scale moves away from the liner so it could not be screwed down near the butt end to the liner, it relies solely on the center pin for anchoring and pivoting! So rather then using a pin peened for the center pin, and risking binding, or to much play between scale and liner I installed a
threaded bushing with a screw on each side to adjust for perfect even
pressure. That worked well also, but there were so many in between obstacles that I wind up going well into the third day before it was finally completed and working good. There were so many steps and procedures doing this knife. I did this knife for Terry Prichard of
Bladebroker. And until I can figure out a way to do it more efficiently I would not be able to give a fair price on the work to the Meerkat. I know their will be some people interested in having their Meerkat jazzed up also after seeing the pics in the forum, so if you can post this message in there so that they will understand what the current situation is with this project.
Thanks Frank
Well i have finally finished the first custom Meerkat from my bench. But i am not sure how to post a pic of the knife in this forum. Maybe someone can be of help here with this. I think some people would like to see a pic or two of this neat little custom. The labor involved was extreme to say the least in completing the custom Meerkat.
we sure don't mind!!! 