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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Rescaled UKPK
- Thread starter phillipsted
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- Oct 4, 2010
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The next installment in my wooden Spyderco Slipit collection is a Wharncliffe Urban modified with Sapelle scales. Sapelle is a member of the mahogany family, and the wood is medium density and fairly hard. It works well with tools, but you have to watch the interlocked grain to prevent tearout. The tiger-stripe grain in this piece is what originally attracted me to the wood. But the hardness compensates for the medium density in regards to the unlined Urban construction. I was originally afraid that the wood would not be strong enough to support the knife - but it works out nicely for a gentleman's knife. Another side benefit is that the total weight of this knife is only 42 grams - down from the stock G10 version which weighs 57g.
As usual, I shaped and contoured the scales by hand, drilling and counterboring the holes on my drill press. Finished it out to 1200 grit, then laid down two coats of TruOil Sanding Sealer, followed by three coats of TruOil and a topping of Ren Wax.
Cheers!
TedP
As usual, I shaped and contoured the scales by hand, drilling and counterboring the holes on my drill press. Finished it out to 1200 grit, then laid down two coats of TruOil Sanding Sealer, followed by three coats of TruOil and a topping of Ren Wax.
Cheers!
TedP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2010
- Messages
- 1,315
I made some time to spend in the shop this weekend and finished up two mods that have been sitting on my bench for a while. The first is a Squeak modified with jigged bone scales. This is only my second or third time to use jigged bone - it is not my favorite material to work with. It tends to chip out, the dye gets all over the place until it wears down, and the smell when you cut or drill it is really bad. But I've always had a soft spot for jigged bone ever since my Grandad got me into knives almost 50 years ago. He was a Case man, and this was his favorite scale material. Nothing says "traditional" quite like dyed jigged bone...
Anyway, this is a set of bargain basement scales from Culpepper. I wanted to try it out before investing in some more expensive slabs. I drilled and counterbored these with my drill press and cut them out using my bandsaw (pee-ew!). I then contoured and sanded them down to 1500 grit. The Squeak doesn't have any washers (they are built into the FRN scales) and I think I'll need to get some phosphor bronze washers for the next time I break it down. That would make the action silky smooth.
TedP
Anyway, this is a set of bargain basement scales from Culpepper. I wanted to try it out before investing in some more expensive slabs. I drilled and counterbored these with my drill press and cut them out using my bandsaw (pee-ew!). I then contoured and sanded them down to 1500 grit. The Squeak doesn't have any washers (they are built into the FRN scales) and I think I'll need to get some phosphor bronze washers for the next time I break it down. That would make the action silky smooth.
TedP
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- Oct 4, 2010
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Here's my second weekend project - a UKPK rescaled in Arizona Ironwood. These scales took some time to get prepped. When I resawed the slabs off a larger block, it exposed a lot of hairline cracks and small checks. So I drilled and counterbored the holes, cut out the scales, and roughly contoured and sanded them down to 120 grit. Then I removed the scales from the knife and coated them with thin CA glue. This filled the cracks and I sanded the CA off and polished the scales out to 1200 grit. It was topped with Ren Wax for the final finish.
TedP
TedP
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- Oct 4, 2010
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OK, here is one that may not be to everyone's taste. This is a UKPK which has been rebuilt with a set of scales made out of Pink Ivory wood. I've been wanting to try this wood for a long time. The pieces I'd looked at were either vibrant pink (which I didn't want...) or were insanely expensive - or both. I wanted a sample that had some sapwood and some heartwood to give it a bit of variegation. Pink Ivory is fantastic to work with. It has a very tight, fine grain and is hard and dense.
I decided to leave the scales thick - they started life as 0.25" slabs, about twice as thick as stock UKPK scales. After flattening and contouring, the scales were still about 0.18" thick. I like the feel of the knife in-hand, it is round and solid, with enough contour to make it more ergonomic than an Opinel.
Pink Ivory doesn't need a whole lot of finishing because of its density. I sanded the scales out to 1200 grit then topped it with a coat of Odie's Oil (a mixture of tung oil and wax). I left this to cure overnight, wiped the excess off after 24 hours, then left the scales to harden up for another 72 hours.
TedP
I decided to leave the scales thick - they started life as 0.25" slabs, about twice as thick as stock UKPK scales. After flattening and contouring, the scales were still about 0.18" thick. I like the feel of the knife in-hand, it is round and solid, with enough contour to make it more ergonomic than an Opinel.
Pink Ivory doesn't need a whole lot of finishing because of its density. I sanded the scales out to 1200 grit then topped it with a coat of Odie's Oil (a mixture of tung oil and wax). I left this to cure overnight, wiped the excess off after 24 hours, then left the scales to harden up for another 72 hours.
TedP
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I decided to try to build some wooden scales on my Pingo this weekend - the first time I've tackled this model. There was an old piece of mesquite burl in my workbench that seemed to call my name. Mesquite is a very hard and durable wood, but much lighter than something like ironwood. To be honest, I've never had that much luck in finishing mesquite - I guess I never figured out the magic formula for getting that perfect gloss. Anyway, I sanded this set of scales out to 1000 grit then topped it with one light coat of rubbed TruOil finished with a coat of RenWax. This should be a good EDC knife.
TedP
TedP
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- Oct 4, 2010
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Well, after being out of action for a few weeks, I finally got the energy to get back in the shop to do some fiddling around. It sure felt good to get back in the saddle again!
This knife started life as a well-used green Urban that I purchased on one of the Forums. The knife had lots of dirt and gunk inside, but it cleaned and polished up after I disassembled it. I found some really nice snakewood slabs at the Blade show and sliced off some bookmatched scales for this one. Snakewood is a native of northern South America and is closely related to bloodwood and some rosewoods. The wood is very dense and hard on tools - and it is also pretty brittle. I ran into some problems with chip-out when counterboring the holes and had to spend time repairing them. All-in-all, however, it is a very strong wood and works well as the structural member in this unlined knife.
I sanded the scales out to 1200 grit, finished with one light coat of Tru-Oil and topped it with Ren Wax. The wood gets a nice finish without the oil, but I wanted to continue carrying this knife and needed to put a little sealer on the scale to protect it. Also, I've found that oil from the pivot won't leach into the wood as much if you seal the inside of the scales with a light coat.
TedP
This knife started life as a well-used green Urban that I purchased on one of the Forums. The knife had lots of dirt and gunk inside, but it cleaned and polished up after I disassembled it. I found some really nice snakewood slabs at the Blade show and sliced off some bookmatched scales for this one. Snakewood is a native of northern South America and is closely related to bloodwood and some rosewoods. The wood is very dense and hard on tools - and it is also pretty brittle. I ran into some problems with chip-out when counterboring the holes and had to spend time repairing them. All-in-all, however, it is a very strong wood and works well as the structural member in this unlined knife.
I sanded the scales out to 1200 grit, finished with one light coat of Tru-Oil and topped it with Ren Wax. The wood gets a nice finish without the oil, but I wanted to continue carrying this knife and needed to put a little sealer on the scale to protect it. Also, I've found that oil from the pivot won't leach into the wood as much if you seal the inside of the scales with a light coat.
TedP
stabman
Gold Member
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Here's a new one I just finished up. This is a Wharncliffe Urban with unstabilized bloodwood scales. I found the wood in a discard pile at my local specialty woods dealer. Bloodwood is very hard and dense, although less oily than rosewood and cocobolo - and gives the unlined Urban enough support to be stable. The final scales are a couple of grams lighter than the original G10. I cut the blanks to size with a coping saw, fitted them to the knife and finished/contoured them with files and sandpaper. For finishing, I used two coats of TruOil topped off by a buffing with Ren Wax.
TedP
Love it!
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This is another UKPK which has been sitting on my bench for a while and finally got finished this weekend. This blade came to me as part of a trade and was a user with a few miles on it. I bought a nice block of heavily figured Afzelia Lay at the Blade Show and decided to try it out. Afzelia is a moderately hard and dense wood and this piece isn't stabilized - to be honest, I wasn't sure if the wood was strong enough to act as a structural part of the unlined UKPK. During finishing, I actually broke one of the scales. It turns out that the wood, while hard and dense, is relatively brittle. I went ahead and cut a replacement scale and finished the project because I really like the look of the figure in the wood. Once the knife is assembled, the scales are strong enough to stand up to EDC use. Afzelia also has a reputation for chipping and tear out because of its open interlocking grain. Fortunately, it didn't present any problems during shaping, drilling, or finishing.
The scales are sanded out to 1200 grit. Four coats of a wood sealer/filler was applied, followed by two thin coats of TruOil and a topping of Ren Wax. I wanted to keep some of the grain exposed because I like the character of the wood - otherwise, I would have wet sanded the first coat of the wood sealer.
Cheers!
TedP
The scales are sanded out to 1200 grit. Four coats of a wood sealer/filler was applied, followed by two thin coats of TruOil and a topping of Ren Wax. I wanted to keep some of the grain exposed because I like the character of the wood - otherwise, I would have wet sanded the first coat of the wood sealer.
Cheers!
TedP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2010
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I've had a project on my bench for a while - to put wooden scales on a lightweight FRN UKPK. My main hurtle was developing a way to replicate some of the features that are molded into the inside of the FRN scale. Here are the three components that need to be designed into the replacement wooden scales. Please ignore the blotchy color - I bought a used UKPK off one of the Forums and the original owner had dyed the blue scales green...
First up is the raised area around the pivot that functions like a washer to lift the blade off of the scales.
Next up is the "pin" that anchors the backspring.
And last is the molded backspacer.
Here is how I addressed these issues. I found some aluminum spacers in my toolbox and machined them to replace the backspacer and the backspring pin. I cut them to length, drilling out the backspacer to the width of the rear bolt. Then I used a counterbore bit (without a pilot) to drill some recesses on the inside of the wooden scale to anchor both of these pins. Lastly, I installed some very thin synthetic washers on the pivot. Here are a couple of pictures:
And here is how the knife looks assembled (minus the right-hand scale):
I'll post some glamor shots of the finished product in the next post...
TedP
First up is the raised area around the pivot that functions like a washer to lift the blade off of the scales.
Next up is the "pin" that anchors the backspring.
And last is the molded backspacer.
Here is how I addressed these issues. I found some aluminum spacers in my toolbox and machined them to replace the backspacer and the backspring pin. I cut them to length, drilling out the backspacer to the width of the rear bolt. Then I used a counterbore bit (without a pilot) to drill some recesses on the inside of the wooden scale to anchor both of these pins. Lastly, I installed some very thin synthetic washers on the pivot. Here are a couple of pictures:
And here is how the knife looks assembled (minus the right-hand scale):
I'll post some glamor shots of the finished product in the next post...
TedP
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- Oct 4, 2010
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Here are some shots of the final product. I didn't finish this one out to a high level of gloss, because this was my "test mule" for figuring out the scale mounting technique. I'll probably disassemble this one soon and replace the scales with something a bit more flashy. But for now, it seems to work like a charm! It will be in my pocket for the next few days...
TedP
TedP
