Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted any progress on the Pride and Bobcat knives. It's been difficult lately trying to balance my day job, landscaping and home improvement projects on my home, and my knife-making hobby. I feel like I've been spread pretty thin, but things are starting to settle down a little bit. Progress on these two knives continues and they are shaping up to be a couple of really beautiful pieces of edged art.
If you recall from my last post, I have epoxied some stainless plugs into the CF of the Pride handle scales so that I have some solid material to tap threads into in order to receive the hidden screws. In the photo I have ground the plugs down flush with the scales and have made everything nice and flat.
Here are the two sides to the Pride handle all fastened together. I really love the clean look of no hardware on the outside.
The handle halves of both knives have had the ugliness ground out of them. Now that they have been profile ground, you can see the actual shape of the knives. You can also see that I have attached the pocket clip to the Pride knife with hidden screws as well. These two knives will be totally different, but each will have its unique beauty and charm.
The specs of this Pride knife call for exposed pivot screws with pivot collars. I've never done this before, so this is a step into the unknown for me; a new and exciting adventure in knife making. Here I am at the mill cutting counter bores into the bolsters to receive the pivot collars.
Counter bores have been cut into the bolsters to receive the collars and into the liners to recess the ceramic bearings.
The next parts that needed to be manufactured were the pivot collars. I suppose you can buys these from a knife supply store, but what's the fun in that? Besides, my client wanted Timascus collars which I don't believe can be purchased. Anyway, I had to come up with a way to turn these down to the right diameter. If I had a rod of Timascus, this would have been a simple process, but all I had was a couple pieces of flat stock. I used a glue chuck with a little CA glue and the live center on the tail stock to hold the disk in place during turning. It worked out just fine. I also had to drill the through hole in the center and cut a counter bore to receive the pivot screw head into the collars.
And there she is in all her glory. Looks pretty slick. I've obviously left plenty of excess material which will be ground down flush to the bolsters. I'm really pleased with how they turned out.
Next, it was time to fit the spacers to the handles. The spacers have to be ground to a precise thickness in order for the blade to swing freely without binding and tight enough to prevent pivot play. It's a little challenging to accomplish this, but my surface grinder attachment makes things much easier.
Here's a quick assembly of the Pride just to see how things are going to look. I love it !
I have one more detail on the Pride that I need to accomplish which is also something new to me. The spacer will have a couple of pieces of Timascus inserted into the spine side to punch up the wow factor. Here are two small pieces of Timascus that I will be using for that purpose.
Here's the last thing that I was able to accomplish in the shop. I've cut a dovetail slot into the back spacer which will receive the Timacus insert. This is another first for me. It's going to be a little challenging to fit the insert, but I think I've figured it out. I'll add one more dovetail slot further down the spacer for a total of two inserts. The slots are about 1/2" wide at the top; just enough to give the pop of color that I'm shooting for.
That's it for now. Thanks for checking in with me and following along on this build. It's definitely nice to be able to make some good progress and I'm enjoying the challenge of some new-to-me details. Have a great week.
- Brandant Robinson