where to send knife for adding finger choil & how much $?

GCBC

GCBC

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Jul 31, 2021
Messages
283
first off, how much $ to add a finger choil to a zt0562?
second, where's gonna do the most OEM looking job? Blade already has a mirror edge on it and dont want anything else done. any more than 25$ ill probably end up passing on it tho counting the 20$ of shipping it....
got used to the spydercos and hinder and coming back to zt im almost cutting my pointer finger non stop with the same grip.


cheers
 
Finger choil easy to add, but will lose a lot of edge real estate -- better draw one in with a marker and see if you are ok with the result first. Or don't use that grip. Or sell it and buy something else.

To save shipping $ see if anyone local can do it? Not a hard job at all with a Dremel and several bits, just a matter of experience with hardened steel.
 
I could do it but if I do it's gonna end up being a b+ job instead of A+ job and I wont ever be happy.
its funny, I was against the choil for the longest time thinking how stupid it was to give up a huge amount of blade length for it... "this little knife has a longer cutting length than the bigger version w the choil" but now that I used ones exclusively for a month with it im totally sold and cant go back lol.
 
Well FWIW here's my DIY suggestions:
- use a marker on the blade to mark what you want the choil to look like
- use a diamond needle file to make a divot in the edge where you want the choil to end; deeper is better bc the less the edge gets heated from powered grinding the better
- tape the blade around the area you are going to remove, to prevent accidental grind marks
- get your Dremel with a cutting wheel bit and some large grinding bits

- grab a piece of practice metal and mark a choil on it
- use the cutting wheel to cut a shallow V inside the choil area, smaller than the eventual full size you will want; this will remove metal faster than grinding it
- use sandpaper drum bits to rough-shape the choil from V to semi-circle
- finish it with one of the wide thick cylindrical diamond bits
- that should look pretty clean, but if desired you can polish it up further by hand with higher grit sandpaper.

- once you have gotten it right on the practice piece, do the same process on the real blade, BUT make sure to run it under some water whenever it starts to get hot, to prevent overheating.

I have done this before and it looked quite good, however the sanded finish will be different than the blasted or whatever finish on the rest of the blade
 
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Why not just use a big, coarse, round file? Wouldn’t take that long, and no risk of burning out the temper with power tools. Clean it up with some sandpaper after and good to go.
 
That would work too but it's gonna take a while and the blade needs to be removed and fully taped and put in a bolted-down vice, otherwise each stroke is an opportunity for error or injury. And especially at the beginning, when the potential for accidentally skipping sideways and scraping the edge you wanted to keep is highest. (I have learned this and more from so many mistakes)

Edit - yes presuming it's a diamond file
 
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RUeUARY.jpg

Something like this?
I did this myself. A dremmel, a sharpie and some time, its quite easy to do.
 
The problem with adding a finger choil were there is an edge. It will still be very thin because of the blades taper. The ones I have done were on large ricassos. So there was a lot of thickness there.
 
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