Question about and old frost bullet knife?

[the rat]

I have an old frost bullet knife that one of the back springs is shorter than the other. Thus allowing vertical blade play. Any ideas how to fix this or who to get to fix this would be greatly appreciated. I really like the knife as it's the trapper pattern with old smooth bone handles. I received this knife as a christmas gift in the late 90's and haven't carried it because of this. Thanks, Travis

 

[screened porch]

It will probably have to come apart. Perhaps you could replace the backspring with one long enough, or maybe you could draw out the spring and make it longer with a cross-pein hammer. Maybe something could be welded to the stop on the blade to fill in the gap. All of these are beyond my technology, and probably yours, since you're asking.
If you want to try something cheap and easy, you might try building up the stop on the blade with JB Weld epoxy. I don't know if it would work, but it would be fairly cheap and easy.
Obviously I'm a hack. I hope you get some more competent advice soon.

 

[shrapne1]

i was going to answer this a few hours ago but the reason i didnt is exactly what scrteened porch said; theres no easy fix, as jb weld seems like a good idea, it will snap off promptly, as that is a "heavy traffic" area with the blade snap and all... My advice would be drilling out the rivits, replacing the spring with a new one, and re- peening it, but as porch also mentioned, it is easier said than done.

Its even possible to reuse the existing spring, although the cosmetics on the bottom wouldnt add up perfectly, but you could achieve this by drilling a rivet hole directly below the current one exactly the same distance down as you want the spring to move up to meet the blade to flush it out...but even this require disassembly of the knife.

In short, theres no easy fix that i can think of...

hope this figure helps:

 

[screened porch]

That's clever, I never would have thought of that.

 

[IVANKERLEY]

I have an old frost bullet knife that one of the back springs is shorter than the other. Thus allowing vertical blade play. Any ideas how to fix this or who to get to fix this would be greatly appreciated. I really like the knife as it's the trapper pattern with old smooth bone handles. I received this knife as a christmas gift in the late 90's and haven't carried it because of this. Thanks, Travis

any chance you could post a picture of what your talking about, ive never had a slipjoint with vertical play, side to side sure thats not all that uncommon... given that the knife is a sentimental piece i wouldnt mess with it as anything you do will be time consuming and expensive if you farm it out, slipjoints are tricky little things, friend of mine took apart a case peanut got it back together but it was never quite right.
You also run the risk of destroying parts of the knife. Slipjoints arent really meant to be apart once theyre together...
if it were me i'd Keep it as a memento and grab myself a new knife for using
Good luck to ya
Gene

 

[the rat]

Thanks for all the replies. Looks like the best bet is going to be to leave it alone.