Do a little bit on each side until you get it where you want it.
Putting these together is pretty easy when you only got the one pin out.
All you got to do is rock the lock lever out of the way...
...Come right off.
And that's your finished product.
>> Beautiful.
These are old punches that were used at the factory in the dies to punch holes.
But I make tools out of them and everybody at the cutlery would make tools out of them.
A tool like that I use for bumping springs on the back of a knife to make it stronger.
A lot of these are used for pushing pins out.
Sometimes I'll flatten a pin if I need to with one of these pieces.
But, I have over the years just came up with little tools that I need to take knives apart
and put them back together.
This is a little lock-back with a tortoise shell handle.
It's celluloid tortoise shell.
It looks like to me somebody tried to finish off a riveted pin without knocking the pin
off first because they kind of dragged it out and popped the pin.
And this blade is bad because it's been ground off on the grinder.
When they put it in the fixture, they didn't put it back up against the pin and so it was
ground off.
So, that blade's no good so we're going to cut it out.
Sometimes you can push a pin out.
These are flared pretty good.
I don't think I'm going to be able to push them out.
I mean it's possible and that is what I use some of these tools for is to push a pin out.
But, that one's not going to move so we're not even going to try because the more you
push and bend something, the harder it is to get it out.
Maybe a blade this size that isn't really sharp, but it's got a fairly tight edge on it.
You drive it in along the edge of the blade there.
Cut the pin.
Sometimes when you cut the pin you can just twist the blade off like that and it'll come
out.
Alright, so that's out.
So, all I did was put that pin up against this part of the steady so that it's starting
to pop out there.
The best way to do this sometimes - I mean sometimes you can get a hold of that and pull
it out from there, but once you've got the flared part sticking out,
you can cut that off
I want to get this lock lever out of the way.
And then you can use this cut-out here on the part of the steady
and take a small bevel-headed punch
and you can drive that pin out.
So now we've got the pin out of that side.
You want to be able to get down into this side of the -
grab a hold of that.
So, I've done the same thing.
I've raised the pin on that side and we're going to - just going to cut it off.
And then we'll drive that one out.
Ok.
So, now the pin's out.
Another piece of equipment that everybody should have is a set of dial calipers.
I know because I work on this pattern a lot that that's a fourteen gauge piece of wire.
This brass wire right here is not fourteen gauge.
It's thirteen gauge.
That's .093, 0.94 is thirteen gauge.
Fourteen gauge would be like .083, .082.
So, that's the gauge wire that I need.
Plus, it's nickel silver and that's what I want to put back in here.
So, I have a good blade.
This is out of a - actually out of a Santa Fe.
It's the right blade though.
Putting these together is pretty easy when you only got the one pin out because all you
got to do is rock the lock-lever out of the way and slide the new blade in.
And put your pin in.
Ok.
So, that's going to have a high-point.
It's no problem.
Once we get it all put together, we just grind the kick a little bit here and drop the point inside
the knife where it belongs.
Another thing that you learn after a while is you really should have a blade that's a
little thicker than the lock-lever when you're riveting stuff up.
This is going to be real close.
I'm not too concerned about it, but the blade should be three to five thousandths thicker
than either your back spring or your lock-lever.
And the reason for that is, is when you rivet it up if your lock-lever was thicker, in order
to tighten the blade, you're going to be pinching your lock-lever.
But, if your blade is thicker, if you rivet it up and even if the blade is tight when
you get done, you can rock it a little bit and loosen it just enough to make it work.
But, if you rock it enough to make your lock-lever work, your blade will probably be loose.
So that's the rule of thumb on any pocket knife assembly and sometimes we didn't have
that luxury at the cutlery.
They would buy nominal stock in fourteen gauge and it might come in, you know, three or four
thousandths either way, lower or higher.
And so they had to work with that.
Sometimes they actually had some little Teflon washers they made to put on either side of
the blade in some knives just so that they would take up the difference.
Because a lock-lever is not made out of the same steel as the blades.
This would be a lower grade stainless.
It would still be hardenable like 410 or low-carbon 420, but your blades would be made out of
420 high carbon or 440A stainless.
So, this was cheaper.
You didn't need to do a better cutlery steel.
So, you didn't always get the same thicknesses that you wanted.
So, when you go to rivet something like this up, another essential tool is a slacker.
This is nothing more than a piece of steel shim stock.
This particular piece is about fifteen, fourteen, fifteen-thousandths shim stock which works
perfect for me when I'm riveting something up because basically when I rivet it up I
know it's going to be loose.
I pull the shim stock out and just tap the head of the pin a couple of times to tighten
it up where I want it and I know it's good.
The other thing is the hole in the bolster is probably about .086 which is maybe about
three or four-thousandths thicker than you pin.
But, at the surface there's a counter bore.
And the counter bore is always about ten-thousandths over that.
So the counter bore in this is probably about .093 to .096 and that goes in there maybe
fifty-thousandths, sixty-thousandths deep so when you flare this pin out, you're
flaring it out into that counter bore and that's what holds the knife together.
Another thing that you learn as you go is how long to leave the pin for riveting or
spinning or whatever you're going to do.
I do this by eye.
If you look at how much pin I've got sticking out there, I feel that's not a bad amount.
If you go too high, you're pounding, pounding, pounding in order to flare it out against
the bolster.
So, let's measure this.
I'm going to say I'm probably out there close to a hundred-thousandths because that's about
something that - actually it's not a hundred-thousandths.
It's about sixty-thousandths.
About sixty-five there.
So, looking at that, that's sixty-thousandths almost looks perfect to me.
If you were doing a knife that took like an eighth inch pin, you'd want to be out there
further, maybe closer to a hundred-thousandths. Depending on -
>> The larger the pin the more you want to leave out to flare.
>> Yeah, and also too if you've got a damaged bolster where that counter bore stretched
out from being riveted on and stuff, you're going to need a little more pin in order to
fill that counter bore.
So, you know, it's all relative, but a good rule of thumb on a knife with a fourteen or
thirteen gauge pin, sixty, seventy-thousandths per side isn't bad.
That actually works pretty good.
Now, you got your slacker in there.
Doesn't usually matter which side the slacker's on, but you keep it to the front of the knife.
And you go back and forth.
You don't just do all your riveting on one side because you'll slide the pin and when
you go to flip it over you're going to find out you ain't got anything to rivet on this side
Generally you do a little bit on each side until you get it where you want it.
If these were brass bolsters I'd be using a brass pin.
Sometimes even on the brass knives or the nickel silver knives, you use a steel pin.
It gives you a lot stronger torque point.
Certain knives they wanted to put a steel pin in because it was something - maybe had
a saw blade, a small saw blade or a screwdriver or a tool like that, you'll see a lot of the
electrician's knives had steel pins just because of the strength.
>> Probably a lot harder to ping those in. Isn't it?
>> It is, but you use a well-annealed stainless steel pin.
I'll tell you some of the hardest pins to rivet are your brass because they harden over time.
So, a lot of times I'll take my brass and I've got a little spoon at home, and I'll
take my little torch and I'll just heat them up until they start to get just a little bit red
Let them cool off.
It totally anneals them.
I mean you can anneal them so you can almost bend them by hand.
But, that's the problem with brass and if you've got soft bolsters and you try to put
a hard pin in a soft bolster, you'd have a very hard time getting a good mesh between
the pin and the bolster.
You go to move it a little bit and it breaks loose.
Where if they're both pretty close to the same hardness, they really forge together well.
When you finish them off, you really don't see any pin at all.
Even if you did see some pin, but you couldn't see anywhere where it was broke loose from
the bolster, sometimes the materials aren't exactly the same.
You know nickel silver is made up of a couple different metals and sometimes the chemistry's
a little different, so when you polish it, you might be able to see that pin because
it's just slightly more silver or slightly more dull.
But, generally the pin material's pretty close to the bolster and you finish it off and you
can't even tell there's a pin there.
I think these pins are pretty close so when we finish it off we should be in pretty good shape
You can go as far as you want.
If you go too far, it'll be really tight when you pull your slacker out and then you will
have to rock it and that always takes a chance of breaking your pin.
Basically you just want to make sure you fill that counter bore.
I mean I got a pretty good head on both sides, so.
By the time you pull your - Now, that's pretty tight.
With this here it's just a little tight, so what I'll do is just rock it a little bit
with a plastic hammer.
Hit that side.
Hit that side.
Now, it's perfect.
So, I barely moved it.
The joints on this look pretty good.
If this was higher it would mean that the end grind was a little bit off here and wasn't
dropping into the notch.
So, we had an operation down there that was done right on an arbor press like this.
You'd put a pin in here, similar to this and then another pin like that and you'd put this
on here and you'd push the lock-lever down into the notch, usually further than you needed to,
ok?
And then you would just tap it a couple times and it would break it loose and the guy would
check it again to make sure that the lock-lever was where it was supposed to be.
That operation was done after you haft the back.
You haft it closed and so when you opened it everything was of course even at that point.
When you opened it, you could tell if you had a high joint.
And then they would do the blacksmithing.
Generally, they tried to get away from doing blacksmithing.
Everything was checked on comparators when they did the end grinds.
We had gauges set up, so every couple of pieces they'd slide it into a gauge, check it and
if you got it pretty close, you usually didn't have any problem with that,
but sometimes you did.
Ok, it's got a high point which means this kick area needs to be ground.
At the cutlery we would have strung these all up and put them in a surface grinder in a
fixture and ground that tang off, but a lot of times the repair guys, if they had a high
point, it's just a matter of hitting that kick a little bit.
Checking it.
About half-way there.
If you were doing four or five hundred of these you'd almost know how much to take off
the first time.
After you did about thirty of them.
We're just about inside the knife now.
Better to keep checking it and get it where you want it then to go to far and then you've
got a blade that's going to be striking on your spring or something on the inside and
that'll take a little chunk out of your edge or whatever.
So, now we've got the point pretty much where we want it.
A lot of the shields and delrin were melted in.
We had fixturing set-up and little heat shielders and they would just drop the shield into the
cavity and a little pressure and a little time and a little heat and it would melt it
right where you wanted it and that's how most of your shields are held in in delrin.
But, in celluloid, bone or buffalo horn or something like that, stag,
they have to be bonded in.
Years ago when they put them in, they riveted them in.
They would have a little hole here and here and a very small piece of wire would be used
and a guy would rivet that shield in and finish the pin off.
So, I sand the back just so I can get a better bond.
Nickel silver doesn't bond all that great, but if you do sand the back, it's nice and
clean and you've got some serrations back there to hold the glue.
Not a bad idea to score up the inside of the cavity.
And always check to make sure before you put your glue in that your shield is going to fit.
I've already fitted this so I know it's going to go in there.
Have yourself a rag ready to wipe away the excess.
You don't need much.
Just a little drop in there will do it.
Celluloid bonds really well.
Generally, I'll throw a clamp on there just for a minute or so.
Little spring clamps that we used to use for all the woodcraft knives.
We had a couple thousand of these clamps.
You can see the glue residue that's still on them.
At one point we were bonding all the woodcraft knives.
Actually they riveted them at first.
Then they bonded them for a few years and it was a terrible mistake and so then they
went back to riveting again.
This is a sixty grit belt, 2x72 Grizzly belt sander.
It's actually called a knife machine.
That's what they call it.
It generally comes with an eight-inch contact wheel, but I made a hub so I could put this
six-inch on there.
My better machine at home I can switch out any wheels I want, but these machines aren't
made that way.
The reason I changed that to a six-inch and this is a good example.
An eight-inch wheel will not fit in that radius.
And I do a lot of knives that I need to do inside finish on and if I don't have a six-inch
wheel on I can't get in there and do that.
Make sure your belt is tracking good.
You don't want it coming off and hitting you in the finger or the side of this belt will
cut you just like a knife.
Pretty easy to tell the difference between the 60 grit and the 120.
You can see I haven' t taken out the deep scratches here and here, but you can see I'm starting
to smooth that out real nice.
And you don't want to press hard.
You want to keep you shape.
You don't want to change the shape of the knife.
>> You said you were "hafting."
And I don't think everybody knows what "hafting" is.
>> And that was the rough haft and the fine haft that we did to match up all the parts
all the way around on the knife.
And celluloid will burn and melt so you want to make sure you keep belt grease on there
and don't really try to take more material off all at once.
Give the belt a chance to cut.
Something else that takes some technique and learning is to make sure you're squaring everything up.
You wouldn't want that to be off on an angle.
That would mean you were grinding more off of one side than the other.
It all takes practice.
I used to have to train guys at the cutlery to do hafting and some guys could pick it
up in fifteen minutes.
Some guys could never pick it up.
And that's the truth.
My son Kal was real good at picking stuff up like this, not because he's my son, but
because some guys just have the ability, you know the hand and eye control to be able to see that.
But, I'd show that to some people over there and give them ten minutes or fifteen minutes
to work on a couple knives and come back and they still wouldn't have it.
And I'd do that all day long with them and I'd finally say "I don't think you're going
to get this."
You know?
Ok, we've - got a little bit more right there -
pretty much got everything cleaned up all the way around.
There will be one more operation with a Scotch-Brite belt after we get some other work done.
The only other thing we're going to do right now - and this knife has already been flat-sanded
here, so I'll these pins are knocked down pretty good, so I'm not going to worry
too much about that.
If I had my drum sander here, I would.
I would do a little bit more on that.
I mean I probably could just hit this cover a little bit.
Just to take out the deeper scratches.
I can't really do that on this side, but I think it's good enough.
Because I be taking off the top of my shield.
But, we are going to knock that pin off and radius the bolster.
But that would actually be called Bader blending at the cutlery because we used a Bader machine.
Blended all the parts at the bolster, all the handle material, took the pin off and
it did radius the bolster.
Alright.
Basically, I have my scratches going in this direction from that machine,
so I'm going to go in this direction to round this up, take all them scratches off.
If you're going in this direction, sometimes it's tough to tell if you got all your scratches out.
But, if you change directions, then you look at it and you can say,
I still got some scratches going this way, so.
>> Isn't a wheel that wide a bigger advantage to a small wheel?
>> Well, you've got more surface here. So, you can do a lot more knives on a surface
that wide before you've got to put more greaseless on the wheel.
Generally, because the greaseless is wet when you put it on,
like I got to go get it out of the refrigerator and you keep it cold in
the refrigerator because it's out here, it's like a glue stick actually
with abrasive in it
and they make all different grits. I use 120 for this operation, but I have a
finer grit. I have a six-hundred grit. I mean it goes all the way. You can get it down to like sixty-grit all
the way up to six or eight-hundred.
>> So, it's not so much an advantage of being able to do a better job, you just have more surface to
work with before you have to reapply or something like that.
>> Right.
Now, if I'd have used my drum sander that would have taken me about two passes on each side to
take them scratches out, but because going against a hard wheel, you're kind of cutting in a
little bit and not leaving a flat surface, so I've got to take more material off here to
compensate for that. But, on my drum sander I can lay it right
up in there and everything would be nice and flat and it'd be a little finer grit. I use like a 180 on my drum sander.
So, those are a little warm, but that's what the finish looks like on the bolsters
after the greaseless operation.
I'm still going to hit the celluloid a little bit and try and take out some of the scratches on the
celluloid here, but you've got to do that with a little bit of care because
you don't want to burn it. But, you can round up your edges a little
bit here. A lot of times when you're finishing off a knife like this, it's good just to break these edges.
You know, it's a little easier to hold onto. You know, you're not holding right onto a
sharp corner.
If you look now, you'll see that I've taken all the sanding scratches out of the celluloid.
And that's it for this operation.
Actually, this is a good time to re-greaseless your wheel, although we took very little off.
Now some of these hubs are made thicker or thinner so, sometimes you're kind of confined to the
size of your hub. You know, I've got some other hubs at home,
but not all hubs will go on these tapered shafts. Some of these tapered shafts have been turned
down and cleaned up and some of the hubs slide too far on you kind of got to fit them. I had to fit these
to this particular machine as oppose to the one I have at home.
See, I have the advantage, I can slow my machine down,
but the best thing to do is to buy a machine that only runs at 1725 as oppose to 3450.
>> What is that stuff you're putting on there?
>> Scour. It's a mixture of a soap that looks a lot like grease. It's called OKITE. And brown pumice.
One thing to remember if you ever did work with scour is it does have water in it.
So, if you're working on carbon steel parts, you want to dry everything off afterwords
because it is water soluble. I don't know how much. I've never put water in this, but I think
the soap itself has some bit of moisture in it.
I mean you can take this over to the sink and just wash it right off your hands.
It just breaks right down.
It's really not a grease or anything.
Alright, next step for finishing would be buffing,
but first we're going to do a Scotch-Brite on the back and edges.
Going to Scotch-Brite the blade quick and we're going to sharpen.
And the last operation would be buff.
So, that's what you have right now.
>> So, this is a Scotch-Brite belt?
>> Yup. 3M makes them. Other people make them.
They're what they call a woven finishing belt. They come in different grits. This is the extra-fine and it's blue.
No matter who makes it, it's always blue. I like buying 3M. They're the best. They hold-up well. They last longer.
This one is for a fine finish. I use the red ones also. Those are good for Scotch-Briting blades.
They're a little more coarse. When you first get them, they're real coarse,
but they tend to break down a little bit.
And that's pretty much your final finish.
There is some dings in the back of this blade. The 5A medium would take them right out
a lot easier than this belt. It does cut. I mean it is abrasive. You cans see how it kind of smoothed out
those scratches a bit.
This is a hollow ground blade so I can lay it up against this wheel right in the hollow
and Scotch-Brite it. I'm going to try and take that Santa Fe Stoneworks
etch off.
Got most of it off.
Alright, we're going to sharpen and strop.
This is basically the same machine as that, only I've rocked it off in this direction.
The belt is traveling away from me.
Grit on the belt is 240.
I've also got the Teflon tape on this.
Now, when you sharpen, you're going to see a burr come up on that edge. I'll sharpen this side
and that's what you look for. You want to make sure that burr comes up on
the edge and you can see it if you got light on there. I'm going to hit this other side again just
so you can see it come up again on this side.
Once you knock that burr off on a buff strop, this blade will be just about razor blade sharp.
Again, this is traveling away from me. It's a stiff buff. The buff has been treated with some type of
compound that makes it stiff. I use basically the same compound as I use
for buffing. You see that burr will come right off.
I generally make two passes on each side.
One first.
Two on the other. And then I go back and hit this side.
And generally that should make it sharp enough to shave with.
Now, we're going to put the buff wheel on and we're going to buff and this knife will be all repaired.
One this is when you buffing, you want to keep the edges of your wheel pretty much clean
of buffing compound. You put your compound in the center. So you're doing your work in the center
so you do your work in the center
and you pull off to the edge and any residue that's on there will be pulled off by the cleaner
part. So, I'm just going to rake off the edges of this a little bit.
Put your compound in the center of the wheel.
Generally, I'll buff my handles first.
I still see I've got some light scratches, but this stuff is soft enough that this will
take it right out.
Again, you got to make sure you've got enough compound. You ain't got to pack it right in there.
You can see I'm putting a very little bit of compound on there, but that'll also help keep the
material cool so you don't melt the celluloid.
Now, I'll do the bolsters.
And that's your finished product.
>> Beautiful.
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