Swinden Key in 77OT

orvet

orvet

Joined
Oct 11, 2005
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Recently I decided to put red jigged bone handles on what was left of a 770T I picked up some where. The blade with tang stamp was broken off at the tang. I thought some of you might like to see a Swinden key if you had not seen one.

Here are the pieces of the knife. Notice the keyway cut into the end of each liner.



In this pic you can see the Swinden rivet that goes into the keyway.



I had one little problem when putting it together. When I inserted the rocker pin I got a hairline crack in the mark side. It happened when I put the pin in, not when I peened it.

Other than that, it came out OK.

Dale



 
Dangit, Dale! You keep putting these nice knives on and I keep drooling and shorting out my keyboard;) Maybe the next time, you can put a warning up so I can get a drool bucket or something. This has to be the third keyboard I've gone through now!

Seriously, that's a beautiful knife. I absolutely love the filework and the red handle.

Marc
 
Nice rescue! A pretty knife from a broken one.
Question for you Dale, do you just twist or press the parts together for assembly??
 
waynorth said:
Nice rescue! A pretty knife from a broken one.
Question for you Dale, do you just twist or press the parts together for assembly??
Click to expand...

I assume you are speaking of the backspring. I usually press them together in my vise with some micarta jaws I made it. With smaller knives I use Vise-Grips with plastic covers over the jaws.

The pins I usually press in with an arbor press and then peen them.

I hope this answered your question, if not let me know & I will try again. I don't like to twist the knife after I have the scales on the handles. Too much danger in cracking the scales or breaking the glue loose from the liners.

Dale
 
beautiful knife dale! great job! it amazes me the way u and kaleb can restore the old ones. think u guys can do the same to my knees?? great work though, thanks for sharing!

kris
 
I guess I don't understand how the Swinden key assembly works. I have assembled a knife several times using standard rivets, so have no problem with understanding the process of compressing the backspring, inserting and peening rivets etc.
But I don't see how the keyway thing works. It seems like final assembly "pushes together" sort of like a Hobo???
 
yeah, like a hobo, it slides together, when you eliminate a layer like Dale did here you have to drill holes all the way through the bolsters and pin it together like a conventional slippie.
 
So if you have a knife like that, can you pop it apart, and back together, easily?? If so, how?? (he says looking for a knife to pop apart)!!
 
fairly easily yes. Just use a dremel to remove the head on the rocker pin, tap the rocker pin out, then hold each liner and push them in opposite ways and it should slide apart fairly easily.



EDIT:Sorry Dale, didn't mean to Hijack your thread
 
fireman said:
beautiful knife dale! great job! it amazes me the way u and kaleb can restore the old ones. think u guys can do the same to my knees?? great work though, thanks for sharing!

kris
Click to expand...

Kris,
If I could to that I would have fixed my knees, hips, ankles, shoulders, elbows, fingers, wrists......etc. :D

Dale
 
waynorth said:
So if you have a knife like that, can you pop it apart, and back together, easily?? If so, how?? (he says looking for a knife to pop apart)!!
Click to expand...

All you have to remove is the rocker pin. Then it just twists apart & back together, though you will have to compress the backspring to get the pin in place. I usually do this with micarta jaws on my vise.

muskrat man said:
fairly easily yes. Just use a dremel to remove the head on the rocker pin, tap the rocker pin out, then hold each liner and push them in opposite ways and it should slide apart fairly easily.

EDIT:Sorry Dale, didn't mean to Hijack your thread
Click to expand...

No problem Kaleb! :)

If you are wanting to save the handles, (like I just did on an old bone handled Camillus rope knife last night) you can cut the rocker pin with a razor blade. Here is a pic of that procedure on a 3OT, though it is not made with the Swinden construction, the procedure is the same to cut the rocker pin.
Once the razor blade is through, between the backspring & liner, tap the end of the knife with a soft faced hammer, until you sheer the pin. Then it will twist apart as MM said. Holding the knife mark side up in your hand, move the bolsters, liner & scale about 5-7 degrees counter clockwise. Then you have 3 assemblies in your hand. Both sides of the knife, and the inner liner (if it has one) and the blades held together by the Swinden rivets.



I hope this helps,
Dale
 
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