Spyderco PPT Makeover (pics)

thaeffman

thaeffman

Joined
Mar 8, 2011
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143
The PPT is one of my all time favourite Spyerco knives. To my knowledge the knife was designed by Fred Perrin and Philippe Perotti and was produced Sacha Thiel and now Spyderco makes its own version of the knife. The Spyderco PPt is a solid knife made from stainless steel with corrugugated g10 overlays. For all intents and purposes its a frame lock but the g10 overlay prevents over extension of the lock bar and give it a feel of a liner lock. I was attracted to this knife by its unique profile and blade shape as well as the the milled g10 scales. To me the handle looks like a rock that was shaped using stone tools and the knife has a prehistoric feel that is backed up by its solid lockup and weight. I recently saw pictures of the Thiel Made PPT's and I must say the titanium framelock version looked quite impressive. Looking at the pictures I really wanted to get the stainless version but the 435 euro price tag kind of put a damper on things :p:p, so I decided I'd just give my own PPT a makeover and see what I got. A trip to the hardware store and about an hour later this is what i ended up with:



Closed:


Lock side with the knife open:


I'm thinking of getting a bigger washer so I can use this knife without worrying about over extending the lockbar


Here's a picture showing the washers on each side. There's 2 washers for each screw on the non lock side and one for each screw on the other


Although I'm pretty satisfied with the way it turned out the makeover isn't exactly perfect

Here you can see the washers poking out past the knife


The pocket clip rides to high and sits a top a screw which can be a nuisance


All in all though, I really like how it turned out. I'm gonna buy another PPT and keep it the way it is because the stock version has its own appeal, while this one looks more modern and hi tech. I totally forgot to take pics before I took the scales off and while I was putting it back together :( but here it is with the scales beside it:



On a side note this new Taiwanese manufacturers know what they are doing, fit and finish and attention to detail is outstanding on this and all the other Taiwanese made Spydies. Check out the melting of the g10 on the scale that goes underneath the pocket clip:



Overall a fun simple tweak/mod/personalization. I hope you like it as much as I do :P. Thanks for reading
-Fez
 
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i doubt Mr thiel ever did a all stainless ppt. the one you saw was a titanium framelock.
 
That's kind of cool man. If you used some different screws (that didn't require washers), that would look like it was designed to look that way.
 
Ahh my bad i only got to that picture via a forum post, I overlooked the description underneath the picture. thank you for the correction ill change the post.
 
It's all about making the knife your own. You've done so with the PPT, and nice job!

I wonder if you can get stainless in the same/near thickness as the lock side plate?
 
It's got a certain I don't know what.

To be honest I prefer the original slightly better, but think your mod has something cool as well. It's definitely slimmer for the pocket, which is a cool thing. And the mod is fully reversable, so there's that too.
 
I'm not feeling the flow on this one, sorry. Looks cheap without the scales. ;)
 
When I scrolled down and saw what you did the PPT in my pocket shivered a bit. Sorry, but I'm trying not digging it, but im glad you're happy with it.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk
 
I respect your idea and love the fact you are thinking outside the box, but I'm not feeling it.
Thanks for sharing.
-Eric
 
What you could also do is cut the g-10 handle so that you end up with a thin piece for the back of the knife. This way you wouldn't need the ugly washers, and it would have the g-10 accent, kind of like how some sebenzas have thin accent pieces. This would not be reversible though. The washer on the pivot doesn't look so bad but the ones on the back.... no good.

Why the washers anyway? Are the screw holes too large or are you just using them to take up extra length of the screws? If that were the case you could always just cut the screws or buy new screws and it would look a lot better.
 
The washers are kind a necessity because the pillars the screws rest in are too long. when you take the scales of you'll see them poking out on either side, the g-1to is there to cover up the excess space and make sure the screws stay flush. so if you take of the g10 and put the screws in the pillar they don't sit flush and There's no tension to keep the blade from begin centered and away from the scales. To really keep everything in its place you have to make up for that space the g-10 leaves behind. I want to cut those pillars down so the screws stay flush but ill leave that project for a rainy day :)
 
lilknifekid said:
You could leave the scales on the non locking side and maybe not need the washers.
Click to expand...

that was the actual intent of removing the scales, the slab of stainless on the locking side is pretty thick and the g10 just adds to the bulk, so i just wanted to remove that to slim up the knife a bit. But when I took of the other scale, i could see the blade from either side and i thought that looked pretty slick.
 
thaeffman said:
The washers are kind a necessity because the pillars the screws rest in are too long.
Click to expand...
So get shorter screws. Hardware stores have all kinds of sizes. Worst case scenario is you have to grind down the screws yourself. Or did I misunderstand you? Did you mean pillar as in a tube that is threaded to accept screws from both sides? If so, hardware stores also have different size stand offs. I believe that is the correct term.
 
I like that a lot better! Looks more refined. I have to admit that the scales on the PPT are part of what attracted me to the knife but I appreciate your vision.

Dan
 
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