- Joined
- Nov 18, 2010
- Messages
- 6,118
When I pulled up onto the mountain at Ethan's, I was greeted with the sight of one very sweaty man behind a 22 rifle pointed in my direction. Thankfully it was Moose, and thankfully I didn't owe him money. Not too long after getting slightly settled, we got to talking knives, and Moose busted out his FFG BK16. Now at this point I had seen one, but never really taken the time to mess with one. Moose went on, as he is prone to doing (it was pointed out that the man loves the sound of his own voice), and extolled the virtues of the FFG versus the Saber ground version. Better slicer, better cutter, more nimble, etc... I wasn't buying it, mostly cause it was Moose selling it, but then the boss handed me one, and I got to use it all weekend. I was reluctant to admit it at first, but the facts were unavoidable. The FFG was the better knife for the types of tasks it would be responsible for dealing with. Of course, that doesn't mean that I couldn't gussy it up a little.
First up was the creation of some liners. The one Moose was toting around was pretty slick, and a big part of that came down to the liners he had on his. The handles on the shorts are very, very comfortable, but they do feel small. The addition of two 1mm liners on either side changed that dramatically, giving it the "big knife feel" you get from the regular sized Beckers.
Next order of business was to strip the coating. I didn't want to remove all of it, just the stuff from the blade area, so I followed Oregon Fal'ers method shown here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...de-while-leaving-the-coating-under-the-scales
I used Jasco from a can, which ended up being a gel. It took awhile, about two hours, but I finally got the coating off. One thing to note, I couldn't find the 3M Lacquer tape, so I went with electrical tape, and that seemed to work nicely. I also suspended the knife blade down while it was doing it's work so that the gel couldn't run up and get into the handle area.
During some sharpening shenanigans at Ethan's last week, my 16 got the tip rounded off a bit, so I spent a good bit of time on the grinder getting the tip back. Pointy helped with that immensely. I also tried to square up the spine. That needed some more work as well, so when I got home I took a stone to it to make it nice and square. It should work great now for a ferro rod, or for making fine shavings.
Once I had the coating gone, it took three dunks in some diluted PCB Etchant from Radio Shack to give it a nice dark patina. Dunk in warm etchant dilution for about 5-10 minutes, take it out and wash it, dry it, then set back in etchant solution. The ratio was about 1 part etchant to 4 parts water.
Finally, after all that was said and done, I took some stainless steel pan head phillips screws I had and cut them down to size with a dremel. Still need to get some stainless nuts, but that won't be too difficult to manage. Someone had posted the screw sizes up here but had mistakenly said they were 6-32, and they are actually 8-32. Anyways, here is the end result of all that business.
Without the coating the jimping is much more aggressive, and grips the hand very nicely. The wider handle makes it feel much better in the hand though, and might be a viable option for those that feel the index finger area to be too shallow. I hope to get it out and dirty it up nicely here in the next few days, so look for more pics if I get any at that point, and if you don't already have one of these, now is the time to go and get one.
First up was the creation of some liners. The one Moose was toting around was pretty slick, and a big part of that came down to the liners he had on his. The handles on the shorts are very, very comfortable, but they do feel small. The addition of two 1mm liners on either side changed that dramatically, giving it the "big knife feel" you get from the regular sized Beckers.
Next order of business was to strip the coating. I didn't want to remove all of it, just the stuff from the blade area, so I followed Oregon Fal'ers method shown here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...de-while-leaving-the-coating-under-the-scales
I used Jasco from a can, which ended up being a gel. It took awhile, about two hours, but I finally got the coating off. One thing to note, I couldn't find the 3M Lacquer tape, so I went with electrical tape, and that seemed to work nicely. I also suspended the knife blade down while it was doing it's work so that the gel couldn't run up and get into the handle area.
During some sharpening shenanigans at Ethan's last week, my 16 got the tip rounded off a bit, so I spent a good bit of time on the grinder getting the tip back. Pointy helped with that immensely. I also tried to square up the spine. That needed some more work as well, so when I got home I took a stone to it to make it nice and square. It should work great now for a ferro rod, or for making fine shavings.
Once I had the coating gone, it took three dunks in some diluted PCB Etchant from Radio Shack to give it a nice dark patina. Dunk in warm etchant dilution for about 5-10 minutes, take it out and wash it, dry it, then set back in etchant solution. The ratio was about 1 part etchant to 4 parts water.
Finally, after all that was said and done, I took some stainless steel pan head phillips screws I had and cut them down to size with a dremel. Still need to get some stainless nuts, but that won't be too difficult to manage. Someone had posted the screw sizes up here but had mistakenly said they were 6-32, and they are actually 8-32. Anyways, here is the end result of all that business.
Without the coating the jimping is much more aggressive, and grips the hand very nicely. The wider handle makes it feel much better in the hand though, and might be a viable option for those that feel the index finger area to be too shallow. I hope to get it out and dirty it up nicely here in the next few days, so look for more pics if I get any at that point, and if you don't already have one of these, now is the time to go and get one.
