Removing serrations?

S

Salamander42

Joined
Mar 21, 2007
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I was just wondering if anyone had tried something like this before. I've got a CRKT Polkowski/Kasper Companion with the partially serrated blade. Since buying it a few years ago and using it as both an EDC and for camping/hiking I've decided that I don't like the serrations. They just seem to get in the way for most of the things I use the knife for. So what I'm thinking about doing is grinding away the serrations and giving the blade a recurved shape. I'd be doing most of the work with a small grinding wheel on my Dremmel. I may also get rid of some of that point behind the choil to make it more usable in non-standard grips. Any thoughts or suggestions?
 
When you remove the serrations, the edge will be much thicker where they were and need to be thinned out to cut as well as the rest of the blade. With AUS-6M, that shouldn't take too long, though.

Always were eye-protection when grinding steel with power tools.
 
I’d also watch the heat. Maybe have a water bucket to keep the blade cool.
 
Yea , you should be know that any significant heat from grinding will hose your blade and although I own several CRKT's I suspect thier heat treat is spotty at best.

I would think about using an abrasive stone , perhaps a cheap AO stone , this way you will not heat your blade.
 
I use a die grinder to sharpen my machetes all the time. Doesn't give it the cleanest, most uniform edge but it does get it real sharp real quick. The trick is to keep the grinder moving and make sure you avoid heat build up. This is definately easier on a large blade, but on a short one, making sweeping passes with water dunks every few passes should be fine.
 
rebeltf said:
Yea , you should be know that any significant heat from grinding will hose your blade and although I own several CRKT's I suspect thier heat treat is spotty at best.

I would think about using an abrasive stone , perhaps a cheap AO stone , this way you will not heat your blade.
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I was considering using a stone, but I don't have anything that's rounded, so shaping the recurve wouldn't work so well. I'll make sure to take it slow and just do a little at a time and keep a container of water handy to keep it cool. If I get done with a couple of other projects today I may start on this tonight or tomorrow. I'll definitely take some pics and let you all know how it goes. Thanks for all the advise!

Edit: Oh, and I agree with you on the CRKT heat treats. . . You get what you pay for. But I still love CRKTs. . . The ones I've owned have been great knives for the price. If I had the money to throw around I'd leave the serrations alone and buy something more suitable to my needs.
 
I did this to an Endura 3. It worked good, but it took me a long time because it was done by hand. If I were using power tools I'd only go until the blade was warm to the touch, then hold off a minute and repeat like others have suggested.

What I did was take the whole edge flat to the stone. That way the serrations were removed, but by the time I hit the actual edge I didn't have to take off a lot and make the knife blade lose a few years of life. Cuts really well now too.
 
Get an cheap 8" aluminum oxide stone. I paid about a dollar for one from harbor freat. use the edge of the stone to make your recurve. as the recurve progresses the stone rounds over. I took the serrations off a couple of cold steel vaquero grands this way takes about two hours or one movie that you don't have to watch real close. The vaquero is a recurved blade already and I didn't have any problem starting with a flat stone.
 
LOL, too late Bikermikearchery, it's pretty much done. I'll keep that in mind for next time I want to do something like this though.

It actually turned out to be a lot straighter than I thought it would. . . almost no recurve at all. I'm not quite done yet, but I'll post a couple of pics and details soon. . . probably tomorrow or Tuesday.
 
I alway look forward to pics of mods and projects that everyone does.
My personal taste go's all the way from stone hand axes to high art knives, as long as there sharp and usable.
 
Vivi, it's been a crazy week and I haven't quite finished with the knife, but here's where it stands:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38624080@N00/

I forgot to take a "before" shot, but it shouldn't be too hard to find a pic of a CRKT Polkowski/Kasper Companion with the partially serrated blade somewhere on the web. . . mine looked like all of the other ones out there.

I ended up doing most of the work with a file, and it ended up being pretty straight instead of having a re-curve as I had planned. I raised the granddaddy and great granddaddy of all burrs and tried to get a couple of pics of them. The close up pics came out pretty blurry, but you can get a pretty good idea of the final outcome. It's probably not the best work, but I don't think it's bad for my first attempt at modifying a blade. I pretty much just need to sharpen it up, and I think I'm going to file down the point behind the choil a bit more. At some point down the road I think I'll make a leather sheath for it and maybe a set of wood scales. . . just for the fun of it. ;)
 
Yeah, I did use the grinding wheel on the dremel a little, but I didn't feel like I had enough control so I stopped before I did any damage to either the knife or myself. Other than that I've done a bit of work with a small DMT stone and that's about it. I was really surprised at how quickly and easily the file went through the steel.
 
That sounds like a good idea using the file. I've got a subcom I want to loose the serrations on and a nice file to do it with.
 
I was really surprised at how quickly and easily the file went through the steel.
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as i understand it, AUS6 is about on par with 420 stainless, which means that it is pretty soft as far as knife steels go. as a result of this, it will most likely fall to the file pretty quickly/easily
 
i have removed the serrations from a gerber, shrade, and a berreta. they all turned out really nice, but if you use a dremmel make sure that the blade is not sparking if it does or changes color you are distempering it. i did mine with a stone and it took a long time but the edges are razor sharp, especially on the berreta that had a true japanese style single sided edge.:cool:
 
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