Who's ever made a custom blade for a folding knife?

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KOLONEL SOPDROL

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Apr 6, 2013
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It looks like a lot of folding knives can be taken apart easily for maintenance.

Has anyone ever designed / made a replacement blade for a folding knife?

I know there are some constraints:

  • The new blade must be the same thickness
  • Pivot hole must be the same
  • Locking geometry must be the same
  • Blade shape has to fit when knife is closed

But apart from that you can play around with the steel, grind, point etc...

I have ordered a large folder and a local company does a pretty good job with waterjet cutting. If I design my own blade it will probably be 5160 since I would want to do my own heat treatment and for that 5160 (edited: 5160 not 1095) is a pretty forgiving steel.

What are your thoughts on this?
 
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That's a very cool idea, I don't know why I never thought of this. I've wanted to make my own knife but I never really carry a fixed blade. This would save the hassle of making a lock and bypass the need for a mill.
 
(I should mention that the knife I ordered is BIG... Therefore the tolerances should not be too much of a pain.)

Think about it:

It would be awesome if we could order blade blanks from the makers of folding knives where the pivot area is already machined: starting at 1095, 8Cr13MOV and then moving up to some high end stuff.

You could then design and make your own blade, after which you could send it off for heat treatment according to your specs.

If you want a scandi drop point blade for your folder, you could have it.

How many times have you looked at a folding knife and thought: "If only the blade was............"
 
Tolerances. That's the key.

If you screw up in the blade locking geometry, then your folder would be unsafe. And while I am no machinist, I think that is quite difficult to nail. The easiest could be a lockback, since a little up-down play is expected, even with factory blades. But a linnerlock o framelock... seems much harder. The blade-liner/frame interference is not straight. I mean that the blade face in this portion is somewhat curved, in order to allow wear of the liner/frame and still provide a safe lock. How do you plan on doing that? Do you have a mill and the knowledge to do it?

There is probably lots of people who can do that, but I don't have the knowledge or tooling to do it. This, I think, is going to be the hardest challenge!

The rest of the issues you are pointing out should be piece of cake.
 
The only problem I see is to pedict the thickness, everything else is just how exact you can replicate the pivot/lock though even there some pivot holes aren't just round :-O
Wouldn't the thickness change when after heat treating the scale has to be filed off? Should one start with one size thicker stock and then reduce it after Ht until the right thickness is achieved? That sounds like a pain.
 
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