All About Pocket Knives

Hey everybody,
I started foolin' around making knives about eight years ago, nothing serious, just for my own amusement and aggravation. Last spring I decided to try my hand at making folders. It was a little more difficult than what I expected, infact it was down right hard. I have made six knives all of the same pattern and after one year, twelve modifications to the master pattern and frustration I have never known I finally made a good one.

My point is this: If you are making knives and want to make the transition to folders, stick with it and be patient. I do'nt think it comes easy for anybody. I am not proud of this fact but the knife in the pic. took me about sixty hours to make. The first few took eighty hours + and are rough.

Sorry about the photo, bright blue sky today with lots of reflections and shadows.

Specs:
O1 Blade and spring
Stainless liners, bolsters and sheild
Ni silver pins
bone slabs

Thanks for having a look.

Glenn

Glenn,
I'm not an expert, but I know what I like, and I like the looks of that knife..........a LOT!

You have done a wonderful looking job with that one. Excellent work!

Keep it up.

Phil

That looks good! I think the handle really sets that knife off. Great job!!!!!

It looks great to me Glenn!

Dale

Excellent job! Great pattern.

Did you jig the bone yourself?

More pictures .......................please.

Thank you everybody for the encouraging words,

Today was the day to start enjoying the fruits of my labor so I honed the knife up and put it through its' paces on a wood dowell. I wanted to test the edge and see if there were any hot spots on the handle. After about five minutes I had enough and when I was cleaning the knife back up I noticed the !#?$@% blade pivot pin reared its' ugly head. Now I have to decide repin or live with it... and the bolsters turned out so nice on this one. Oh yeah...IT CUTS!

Here are some better pics (visible pivot pin and all) along with a photo of the roughed out blanks prior to finishing and assembley. gmusic, the bone slabs are from Cullpepper & Co. They call it "standard american jig pattern".

Thanks again
Glenn

One of my greatest challenges has been just how hard to set or hammer that pin. The only answer I've come up with so far is I've never hit it too hard yet. There may even be different answers to the question if using brass, stainless or nickle silver. Just make sure you have a slackener because the result is absolute failure.

Thanks for the pics Glenn. Very nice!

Do you countersink your bolster pivot holes?

I understand Cullpepper has some really great stuff!

I think there are a lot of variables that come into play when setting bolster rivets. The malleability of the pin material is definitely one of them. Perfectly round precision reamed holes and precise countersinking is also important (you will have a hard time filling a square hole with a round pin). I think there is also some relationship between the thickness of the tang, the thickness of the spring and the thickness of the slackener. If you're up for some extra work you can use a pivot bushing and avoid the problem entirely. Check out http://www.boseknives.com for some excellent tutorials on that. They are on the "links" page.

As for bone slabs Cullpepers has the best dyes. Their amber color is stunning. Sheffield Supply sells what they call a flat top shetland jig in amber that is the prettiest I have ever seen and thats taking into consideration any old Schrade, NYK Co. or whatever (imho).

Well Glen, your certainly on the right track. There's none better than the Bose boys!

All the points you made are most definitely variables. Thanks for sharing, and please keep us updated.

Nice work.......................

My eyes must be getting really bad as i cannot see the pivot pin sticking up... What I do see is a beautifu knife. I know how much work I put into just doing the scales so I really can see how it took 60 hours to make that one.

How about a picture straight down the spine and with the knife closed, the blade well.

Redrummd, I really did'nt want to show this angle. It reveals the one flaw that really bothers me. This photo shows visible gaps between the bolsters and liners. The first knives I made the bolsters were riveted to the liners, chopped on is the cutlers term, each knife a little tighter than the one before. For this knife I thought I would try silver soldering them together ( I had soldered guards on fixed blade knives so no worries there) and the job turned out good. At this point there is a lot of excess bolster material that needs to be taken down even with the edges of the liners. well I was a little heavy handed on the belt sander got them hot and the solder smeared along the edges in spots A knife frame looks pretty simple but there is a lot of tediuos work involved getting the bolsters lined up square and even. I did'nt want to make a new frame and I knew if I took them apart they would never go back together the same as before so I continued on and live with the gaps. No big deal some will say but when you are trying with all you have got to build a perfect knife it is a disapointment and everyone likes a tight seamless knife. Just thought I would share that so no one else makes that mistake.

On the up side the blade is ground nice and even on both sides, lays straight down the center of the pocket and fills it up to the very end. I had a hard time squeezing a 2 15/16" blade in a 3 5/8" frame. That was why I had to modify the pattern so many times. The blade would either bottom out on the back spring or the tip would stand outside the frame.

hope this helps somebodys knife making,
Glenn

I have never counter sunk my pivot holes. Am I missing something here? How much do you countersink?????

Checked the suggested tutorial @ bose.com and found he uses a 10 degree taper .040 deep in the holes on his pins. Can't lose on that idea. I will try to find a taper somewhere to do that from now on.

I've had one for some time and don't remember where I got it. MSC http://www1.mscdirect.com & Enco (a sister company with MSC in Nevada with LOWER prices) http://www.use-enco.com

I don't know if they have these but it works quite well.

Thx, Hukk. I've only done about 25 folders so far and it seems to me that about .100 to .130 covers the range of pins I've run into. Is this a good representation of what I should look for in small end of the reamer?
thx,
mike

I have one like Hukk's that I bought at a local tool store.

Just a quick aside, when purchasing precision tools, I have had MUCH better luck with USA made tools.
Precision tools from China are much cheaper, but are usually not very "precision."
If your tool is off by .005" your work will be off at least .005", perhaps more. If you don't think that makes a difference, .005" extra when peening the pivot pin can make the difference between a smoothly opening blade or a sticky blade of it is .005" under or a wobbly blade with .005" over.

Dale

Mine is made in the USA. Tapers, reamers and other precision tools need to be accurate. I have a set of Chinese junk drill bits that are .003 off (small) and that is enough to crack ebony or snakewood with a correct size pin - I know because it happened to me. This is where your precision set of calipers come into play. Mitutoyo calipers are made in Japan - I think but are amongst the best.

Dale is 100% correct!