All About Pocket Knives

I am in deep doo-doo! A friend was showing me an old knife he got from his Grandfather and it was quite rusty. So I offered to de-rust it using Evapo-Rust. When I removed it after soaking it all night (too long), the blades had turned black, despite the claim it won't hurt steel. Apparently it does this to high-carbon steels if left too long. OK - I can polish them. That's the good news.
When I cleaned it and operated the blades, the back springs (both of them) fell out. Those are the little pieces in the phots. I can only assume they were already broken and held in by the rust.
Knife blade is marked Schrade Knife, Walden NY 896K. The emblem was missing before I got received it.
I watched a video by muskrat on repairing one, where he just pounds a knife wedge into a similar Schrade Knife to separate the sections.
Wouldn't the "bone" handles split when the brass pins are pulled through them? He didn't appear to drill them out or machine the heads off or anything that I could see.
I am considering doing it, but seek reassurance this is the thing to do.
I would feel a lot better if I could take it back to my friend as a working knife.
Can someone suggest where one can get the 2 back springs and suggest appropriate material to make the brass pins to hold it together?
Advice and suggestions welcome.

Welcome to AAPK. Most if not all of your questions are answered here in the Knife Repair and Restoration Forum https://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kn ... m.php?f=37. However you’ll have to read through the threads there to find them so maybe someone will answer for you here.

If it was mine I’d find a donor Schrade knife of the same pattern (maybe one with broken or missing blades, or broken covers, etc, but having good springs), scavenge the needed parts from it and proceed from there. It’s possible however to fabricate springs, if you have the required tools and skills. All that can be found in the posts I referenced.

Ken

Hint: the 896K is exactly the same knife frame as the 895 open-stock, the 899 open-stock, the 898K, the 825 Westerner, the 897UH. There are hundreds of them for sale on Ebay every year, often with some wear and at a reasonable cost. I wouldn't bother saving anything off the OP knife except the covers, if they are bone.

If the knife was left soaking with the blades partially open (not fully open or not fully closed), then it is possible that the stress snapped the springs. Don’t ask how I know
Froe

There are a few possibilities here.
Muskrat Man was probably cutting through the pins. If you do that just right, they cut without damaging the handles.

This particular knife might possibly have Swinden rivets, which means that you only have to remove and replace one pin. That is not a guarantee, just a possibility.

https://youtu.be/YLEB0KySrkY?si=M5MRyhqfGDJUjaY0

That simplifies disassembly and reassembly, but complicates replacing the spring.
Brass pins are available from Hobby Lobby and other craft stores, and sometimes at Ace Hardware stores.
If it does not have Swinden rivets then you will also need silver nickel pins, which I have only found online.
Your best bet would be to talk to your friend and let him know what happened, and find a knife mechanic who will repair it for you.

Some repairs are easy, and some are not.

Here is one ready to buff up. Won't go too high.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/286273914166?_ ... R6aG_MOQZQ

I doubt it was you who caused the breakage. If the knife was that rusty the damage was already done. Are the handles plastic? Can you see any kind of pin head outline like a circle in any of the bolsters?

Eric

I am very late in thanking all of you for the thoughtful suggestions, so thanks to all of you for what you have suggested in the past.
Since I have not done any of this sort of repair before, I read the comments and wandered off and watched several youTube videos, read lots of posts on this forum and elsewhere, and sort of lost my momentum on the knife along the way. Anyway, the knife is still sitting on my workbench staring at me so I started by taking it apart by carefully drilling the head of the one brass pin at the middle bottom of the knife. Tapped it out with a nail and it came apart OK. The center part with the blades slipped away from the sides of the case with a little wiggling. I cleaned up the brass and it appears OK.
Now I see that the blades (which are loose on the pins) do not slip right off of the hinge pins as they have very precisely sized, perfectly round heads on them.
Since it was pointed out that several models share the same construction as my 896K, I have ordered an 897UH off eBay with a broken main blade. My desire is to only use the springs from it, i.e. keep the original blades and case sides together, etc. OK - I don't want to tell my friend that I mucked up his Grandfather's rusty (and broken) knife!

Thank you all,
John