What a crazy few weeks this has been. I know that we are all personally affected by this pandemic, and I hope that everyone is staying safe and well. My sincere condolences to those who are experiencing hard times and personal loss during these hard times. I am one of the lucky ones, since I still have a steady job to go to everyday and income to take care of my family. What a blessing it is to have work. I wish everyone all of the very best and hope that you are joining with me in praying for our nation and the rest of the world.
I have made some notable progress on the Pride and Bobcat knives and thought that I would share some photos of the work done so far.
The pivot assembly of a folder is one of the most import parts of a folding knife and is absolutely imperative to get right. I use a barrel pivot in conjunction with a pivot bushing on my knives. Here I am dialing in the thickness of the bushing.
Since I contour my handles, I needed a way to register the pivot collars on the Pride knife and keep them positioned. In order to do this, I drilled a small hole through the collar and the bolster and inserted a small pin. This way the collar will not spin inside the bolster.
Here is the pin after being ground down and you can see the backside of the bolster in the background with the small hole that will mate with this pin located near the pivot hole.
Here I am getting ready to grind the lock ramp on the back of the blade tangs. I have a gauge block that helps me tilt the tool rest at 10 degrees for the correct angle on the lock ramp.
Grinding in the lock ramps.
Next I set the open position for the blade by positioning it at the correct angle and scribing a line at the front of the spacer. I'll grind the spacer down to the line until the position is dialed in.
The inside profile of the spacers has been marked out and ready for grinding.
Before I start contouring handles, and things get out of square, it's time to get the pocket clips attached. I clamp the clips to the handle and spot drill the holes from the back side.
With the holes spotted, I drill blind holes into the clips. These holes will be tapped in order to accept three screws. No pocket clip hardware will be visible on either of these knives.
Pocket clips attached. We'll shape them later on.
I assemble the blade and back liner and clamp it in place where the closed blade position will be. I drill a 1/16 inch stop pin hole so that once the pin is installed, the blade will close without slamming the edge into the spacer.
The knives are each assembled for the first time. Now they are starting to look like knives instead of a pile of parts. Onto the grinder we go.
The handles have been ground to their final profile, the blades have been ground to match the curves of the spines, and the handles have been ground with a nice and comfortable contour. I grind these up to 2000 grit and give them a quick buff. Any pin holes and voids in the buckeye burl get filled with sawdust and superglue at the 600 grit level and get polished out until they become invisible.
A quick pic of the knives in their closed position.
That's it for today on the progress of these builds. We're getting closer and closer to the final stages. I can't wait to get these two completed. Remember that the blades are Damascus and the bolsters are zirconium. These are going to look very different and absolutely awesome once finished out. Thanks for following along with me on these builds. More to come next week.
- Brandant Robinson
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