I think Jeff posted about a German knife that had no solder on the bolsters to hold them on. Another thing I have found fairly common is to have little solder on the bolsters or solder that has failed, I think that is often due to the fact that the liners are hollow and that very little solder was used.
I decided to make a single blade out of an old Carl Schlieper Eye Brand that has been sitting around my shop for seven or eight years, waiting for me to do something with it. I think I paid about a dollar for it from a junk box.
This is the before, broken spring for the secondary blades, broken tip on the clip blade, missing the rear handle, and the whole knife is full of thick grease/lint/gunk.
I split the knife with a razor blade and all the bolsters were loose.
I decided I would re-solder the bolsters so I cleaned the area with a brass brush and wiped off some of the grease. I put a drop of flux on the end of the liner and heated it up so it would mix with the existing solder still on the liner.
Then I set the bolster in place and just heated the bolster and liner until the solder melted and the liner sat down in place. A big thank you to Bob (just bob) for the lighter that works well as a mini torch/soldering iron! I don’t know where he got them but they’re really nice because I didn’t have a small torch. Thanks again Bob it works great!
One mistake I made when I first started soldering bolsters is putting too much solder on. All it takes is for a light coat of solder sticking to one of the surfaces and then heat them together so that the solder between the melts and sticks to both sides. I was fortunate in this case the solder was shaped to fit where the bolsters had been originally so when the solder melted the bolsters didn’t shift as the solder flowed beneath them. I’ve had that happen and I’m here to tell you, you don’t want to grab a hot bolster and try to put it into position with your fingers! Pliers work much better!
Once I got the bolsters reattached this was a pretty easy mod to do.
After cleaning the parts I used; the liners with bolsters reattached, the master blade spring and the master blade, which I reshaped to a Wharncliffe. Also it required a couple of bone slabs for handles. I had to smooth Amber bone slabs that had come from different dialogues even different sized pieces of bone. The handle on the pile side was much thicker than the one that was on the mark side. I had to sand the bone down to thin it out and the farther I sanded it, the lighter the color. I didn’t really care about the two different colored handles; this knife is strictly a user for me primarily in the shop. I didn’t even bother to put my etch on it, I will probably do that next time I set up the etching machine to etch some blades.
I thought some of you fellows might like to see the soldering process.
The soldering process is about the only thing new or different on this post then many of the ones I've done before.
I just thought I would show you how I do it in case anybody was looking for ideas.
Hope this was helpful.
