If you want to save the handle, drill out the tube rivet and slip the handle off.
You can re-install the handle with epoxy and new tubing.
If you don't want to save it, it will cut off easily.
http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/859722/tp/2/
[video=youtube;wY9MW7i1HDk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wY9MW7i1HDk[/video]
Nice video (I'm going to have to get some of that stuff). Something to make a serious point of, however, is that while--if he decides to do anything--he absolutely can drill/slip the handle off, I highly recommend not removing the coating from the tang if the kraton is going back on. Nine times out of ten, if you pull a rubber grip off of a stainless handgun, you'll see rust where they made contact, and the stainless steels used to make guns tend to be a good deal more rust-resistant than most stainlesses in the knife world. Rubber, be it Kraton or Neoprene or Santoprene or Resiprine (although this last one is far superior to the others) holds moisture next to the steel and doesn't let it evaporate away. Even the AUS-8A version of the SRK in that video would likely rust if he'd saved the handle to put back on. The Carbon V (0170-6C) SRK's tang would very likely begin to pit deeply beneath the kraton handle without any coating.
I realize, OP, that you may have decided to not pursue this any further but here's an option for you if you decide to proceed. Go ahead and drill that lanyard tube out of the handle--don't take what looks like the outside diameter of the tube as your guide because it's flared bigger on the ends than it is in the middle. Start with a drill bit that's just slightly larger than the hole in the center of the brass itself and drill through. Move up to the next drill bit and repeat--eventually you'll run out of brass walls. Don't worry in the slightest about widening the hole in the steel--the tang is just as hard as the blade and without carbide bits you're barely going to make a dent in the steel.
Go down to an ACE hardware or hobby/craft store and pick up a very thin (they'll probably have 0.064" or even thinner) brass or copper rectangular piece, and some heavy duty carpet tape. The brass/copper is there to provide a straight edge that's very tough and won't sand away. Carpet tape is some of the most versatile of the double-sided tapes that exists in terms of what it will stick to. Now, having drilled out the brass tube and slipped the handle off, pick a spot that's in front of the handle but still on the flat ricasso area--maybe 1/4" ahead of the handle, or maybe all the way out to the edge of the ricasso right where it plunges down to the primary grind just to make things easy. Pick a side, lay the blade down and then tape the brass/copper down to protect the coating you don't want to remove. Now, use either a dremel with a brass wire wheel or 220 grit sandpaper on a narrow block to cut yourself a narrow channel in the coating, probably half an inch. This channel doesn't have to be especially neat, the brass/copper piece is providing a nice, clean edge on the one side and that's what matters. Now...
1) If you use a dremel with a brass wire wheel, you want to watch for heat buildup on the blade as they spin their wheels extremely fast, so just use it for a few seconds at a time and then back off for a few seconds. Even better, have a wet washcloth handy to hold against the blade for a few seconds in between swipes for the dremel, this will cool things down very quickly. You actually have to heat the steel to hundreds of degrees to affect the temper, and the SRK is fairly thick so it won't happen all that quickly, but there's nothing wrong with erring on the side of caution.
2. Using more of that carpet tape to stick a strip of sandpaper to a 1/2" wide piece of wood would be a quick/easy option too. The nice thing is you don't need to worry about heat buildup, but the bad thing is that where a brass wire wheel will not change the finish of the steel underneath beyond leaving some brass behind that you can clean off, sandpaper absolutely will scratch the steel to some extent, so you want to be careful how hard you're baring down. As you're nearly through the coating, switching to a higher grit of paper would be an option too. I really think brass wheel on dremel is the better option, just be proactive in keeping the blade cool.
Anyway, regardless of how you got there, you now have a "fire break" in the finish. Flip the knife over, re-tape your thin metal strip and do it again on the same spot. You'll also need to do the top/spine of the knife; if you decide to use the edge of the ricasso as your terminator line, you're now done as there's no coating to strip from the edge. So, now that your knife looks like it has an extremely weird tanning line around its waist, you can go at it with the stripper chemical. The bare patch you've created is the edge of where you want the chemical to go. Just be careful and go slow--if you use the painting-on method like in the video, start in the middle of the blade and push stripper out to your "fire break" rather than starting on the fire break and going the other way, where some chemical may squeeze out behind your spatula and ruin that nice clean coating edge you just worked at creating. If I were you, I'd actually have the tang and ricasso hanging off the edge of the cardboard so that no chemical that spills around the edges managed to work underneath the area I'm trying to protect. Just hold it with your hand and spread with the other hand.
Thus, your stripper has done most of the work for you and you now have a bare blade with an extremely professional looking straight edge where the coating stops. Now, just measure the hole in your tang (I'm assuming the old tube was destroyed entirely when you removed it) and replace with the appropriate diameter of brass tube (also available at most hardware stores) and flare the ends with a flaring tool--any kind of steel punch with a fairly thick taper will do this well enough for a rubber handle, if you don't have a flaring tool per say.
So, I tend to be overly-wordy when I describe things but I try to cover the types of things that I WISH were in most directions---the experience you pick up after having screwed up something you didn't want to screw up---especially since Carbon V SRKs are not readily available anymore.
If you do it, let us know how it goes.
