All About Pocket Knives

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is, "Don't be so daft, David" but thought I would ask....

Would it be possible to take a spear point blade out of an Ulster (made by Schrade) slip joint like this:

Modified Ulster Camper by Pinnah, on Flickr

... and to cut a locking notch in the tang and then put it into a Schrade Old Timer 5OT frame like this:


schrade-5ot by Pinnah, on Flickr

Both knives are made by Schrade and the tangs appear (with my eyeball micrometer) to be the same shape and thickness on the exposed blade end of things. I suspect the primary question is whether the shape and size of the hidden portion of the tang of the Ulster spear point is big enough to allow the tang to reshaped to be compatible with the 5OTs locking mechanism and pivot.

Another consideration is that if the donor blade comes from a camper, the blade has a small amount of built-in bend to the left so it won't hit the other tools, so that would need to be cold set to be straight.

I suppose an obvious way to get what I'm looking for would be to save my nickles for either an old 51OT or a GEC #73, but I think both of these knives are a step up on size. I'll probably end up with one or the other (or both) of these larger knives, but would love to have a locking spear point in the smaller size. In particular, I love the Ulster/Schrade spear points better than any other. Just want it to lock.

Am I entirely nuts or might there be some possibility to this?

In short, no

lockblade tangs are wider and have the notch cut in, slipjoint blades are too narrow, at best they can be welded up to fit but I don't recommend it.

If you want a locking Ulster or Schrade spear blade make one out of an Ulster or Schrade TL-29.
Adapt the tang of the spear blade to take the liner lock of the screwdriver blade.
It is a pretty easy job to do. A bit tricky but nothing like what you have proposed above.

I made a liner lock spear blade TL-29 conversion 4 or 5 years ago.
Several other members have made these conversions as well.

There are several threads here where members have posted these.
There may even be a tutorial on this.

Dale, that's a wonderful idea.

The search function on the site is barfing on me for some reason (also getting some debugging messages on the header of the web pages when browsing) so, I'll try to dig out the old posts using google's site search capability.

Do I understand correctly that a Camillus TL-29 would be an easier knife to convert due to it's fully pinned construction?

The Ulster/Schrades would mean dealing with the Swinden key construction, no? Does that rule them out?

It doesn't rule them out, it's just much easier to assemble something with ready made interchangeable parts than it is extreme modification with little chance of success in an attempt to make parts from two totally different knives to interchange

Schrade did not make Swinden knives prior to about 1962, so the older knives won't have the Swinden key.

Camillus made a lot of the Schrade & Ulster knives, especially where the TL-29 is concerned. Any Camillus made knife won't have the Swinden key because Schrade had the only Swinden machine,(So I am told).

I cannot recall seeing a TL-29 made with, the Swinden key.
I just checked some TL-29 parts bins, and I didn't see any of them that were of Swinden construction.


One sure way to tell if it is a Swinden type knife
- If you can see a pivot pin in the bolster it is NOT made with the Swinden system.





The debugging messages on the header are a real pain. I emailed Bryan this morning about that and then followed up with a call this afternoon on that and another issue.
I have not heard from him yet, but he usually just fixes things and lets me find that they are fixed when I next access that part of the forum.