Why sunken pins on GECs?

E

ErikMB

Gold Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2017
Messages
870
I am just curious why GEC uses those sunken pins, mostly to hold on scales. I don't think I've seen a sunken pins in the middle spring location, though.

The little holes tend to gather a little bit of dust, oil, and food for me. Not too bad but it does make me curious about how they make that design decision.

When I make my (very amateur) knives I just use a regular pin after __trying__ to make the hole a little cone shaped so the pin expands toward the outside. Grinding down tends to kill the little mushroom heads I try to make to keep the pins in. This produces... medium results.

Any ideas about GEC's thinking on this?
 
My guess would be that they decide upon a pin length and just run them through assembly and spin them to set the scales. The sunk pins used to bug me, but I have learned to ignore them. A tiny bit of never dull cloth and a toothpick does pretty good at cleaning the holes and getting rid of any verdigris on the ends of sunk pins. I would rather they took the time to fit proper length pins in each hole, but that may be a decision made to be cost effective, like brownshoe said, only GEC management knows the answer, and they don't post here...
 
I think on wood and stag covered knives GEC uses sunken pins to avoid over polishing or dishing the material when they finish the covers, otherwise sometimes you can feel that last .001 of brass pin and continuing to sand down the covers will dish them out. This is not a perfect theory because many GEC knives have flush and sunken pins like the 86 2019 BF.

1445618F-4E73-431C-8976-AFD6239CB492.jpeg
 
I think the pins that hold the covers on are all of one length with a prefabricated dome head on the outside -- basically a small, brass, dome-head rivet. The holes in the scales are counterbored to the correct depth for the rivet grip length and the holes through the brass liner are slightly countersunk on the inside. The rivet head is supported in the counterbore during scale assembly and the tail of the rivet is driven into the countersink on the inside of the liner and then ground flush. I work in metal fabrication and this is an excellent way for them to reduce the skill level needed for scale assembly as well as dramatically reducing loss of finished scales due to cracking from overexpanded scale pins. This would only be true for the scale pins though, the pivots and backspring pins are obviously through pins.
 
"Because they can." and/or "It is traditional on (for) the pattern." is my guess why GEC uses sunken pins on some of their knives.

It is also possible the boss, Mr. Bill, just likes them better than flush pins.

Regardless, there are more people ready, willing, and able to buy the knife, sunken pins or flush, than there are knives.
 
Sventhelumberjack said:
I think the pins that hold the covers on are all of one length with a prefabricated dome head on the outside -- basically a small, brass, dome-head rivet. The holes in the scales are counterbored to the correct depth for the rivet grip length and the holes through the brass liner are slightly countersunk on the inside. The rivet head is supported in the counterbore during scale assembly and the tail of the rivet is driven into the countersink on the inside of the liner and then ground flush. I work in metal fabrication and this is an excellent way for them to reduce the skill level needed for scale assembly as well as dramatically reducing loss of finished scales due to cracking from overexpanded scale pins. This would only be true for the scale pins though, the pivots and backspring pins are obviously through pins.
Click to expand...

This ⬆️ is correct. The pin end is probably half hollow as well, spread into the countersink in the liner so no hammering involved.

Eric
 
I had a bone GEC 57 which I sold, with 4 pins and all were beautifully domed . Just think it looks so much better finished to have pins that are the same in appearance. I have other GEC knives with domed or flush pins so they can put out these types ;) It just seems more common on GECs to have a sink hole or two, nor does it stop cracking as I've seen a couple of Ironwood 59s on here with cracked pinholes, that of course must be due to the quality of wood...

So, in the words of Bartleby, a character from Classic American Literature "I prefer not to" 😸
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top