Knife Wonder

I'll add commentary and explanation later

Hey all,

Wenger is coming to an end, I believe it's being bought up by Victorinox, it's older, bigger brother. I don't know what this will mean for the Wenger designs, but should it mean an end to the more "hit and miss" attempts at innovation, I'll miss it. Folks seem to find the fit and finish of Wengers less...well less, but I've never been disappointed in it, and frankly I kind of like that they always tried to push things, often too far :)

Anyway, this is a Wenger 51, it's big and beefy and has a nice blade shape, it also has a liner lock on the main blade that you disengage...wait for it...by pushing on the Wenger shield! awesome, hun? Well i thought so.

I was at the SMKW a few weeks ago and because of the... "merger"? ...they were selling off the Wengers at 50% off, it's not often I can afford a good knife or SAK in retail store anymore, but I do like to do my part of retail stores and snap at the chance to take part...so I did.

I had seen SAK mods and re-handles before and thought it might be "fun" to try it, that's how it always starts. Needless to say there were complications. Still it ended up with something I'm happy with, to end the suspense here it is:

It has some faults, but none that are life threatening, and the lock still works so overall, yeah, I'm happy I tried it.

Step by step

Step one:

The first step was to get the darn original scales off, something I managed only stabbing myself with a fine tip screw driver twice!

I found it easiest to work the edges at the top

One done!

Two! And still alive, yay.

Step two

Form there I figured it'd be roughly like making the scales for a fixed blade knife....it's not, really, although it's got some common enough traits I was able to get far enough into it before I found out what I should have done.

So, I traced out some rough scales on some African Maroko I'd been wanting to use

Made some notations of where the essential points where, and which was left and right

Got to cutting with the trusty coping saw

Drilled through the original scales for the pin holes (advice I found on a similar how to on britishblades.com but that was for a regular red scales SAK)

Sanded them down on 80 grit sanding disks

Note: the holes, and this is important for later, only have to go a little way into the scales. The plastic ones essentially are tooled to a point where can accept the [pins on the knife into them, essentially they "plug" into these holes. Since we’re not going to be able to produce the same effect or accuracy of tooling you need them just a little bigger than the actual pins. As only as they fit in and the scale a can rest flat against the knife, then you’re in, we're going to epoxy!

Step 3

I cut out the shield hole by drilling with the biggest bit I had (1/4) in the center of where it needed to be then I pencil filed (I call them pencil files because we used to use them in school to make decorate pencils instead of, you know, listening in class) the hole out the rest of the way.

Step 4

Thinning the scales. It was a lot of work to thin them down to and past the original plastic ones (I wanted it a little less chunky)

What's more I had failed to consider exactly how much wood I would've to remove during step 3, and ended up "uncovering" the end of several of the pin holes I'd drilled. I don't know I could have done the pin holes any shallower, and I didn't want the scales any fatter in the end this is just a risk I think you have to take.

However you should be aware of it because the wood around the shield is about to get very thin as well, it required delicate and constant attention to not break through...too badly anyway.

Step 5

This is where things got interesting...I realized there was more to the plastic scales being hollow then just good economics. That's right, the liner lock system needs some room to move.

After some soul searching in which I seriously pondered why, exactly, I put myself and perfect good knife through this kind of thing, I decided I would sand as best i could a rough hole and try to file my way out the mess (since my files aren't bendy, that was difficult.)

But I eventually, and by some miracle, managed to get it to where it would work pretty well.

Step 6

Epoxy and clamp that fella. I actually used Loctite on this one, gorilla glue will expand, not something you want for this kinda job, and more complex epoxy's seemed needless for the task.

Make sure to check that the scales lay flat on the knife before you star, if not go back to sanding till they do, makes it a lot simpler, and limits gaps or bending the knife liners, which can affect the function.

Ta dar! Here we see it in the light and with different angles.

You can just about see where I exposed another pin hole here at the top of this scale to.

As you can see I exposed two pins on this side...eeek! but it almost looks intentional. So I tell people it was.

On a side note this wood came out awesome!

All tools work. Also the reshaping of the screwdriver access area was intentional, I had curved it around like the original scale but losing that made the profile slimmer the tool easier to get to, and gave me a lot less headaches because it's a very thin a lonely piece of scale at the back end that was always threatening to catch on something and fall off.

If I'd made the wood any thinner here it would be dangers to use the shield to depress the liner lock, thankfully it work out and the shield can be pressed before the wood got paper thin. As this was one of the coolest ideas Wenger tried (in my opinion) I'm very happy about that.

It didn't require very many tools, none specialized, and was fun, despite my tendency to complain.

Anyway, thanks for looking again, if you did, and if you didn't then how are we talking exactly? Hoped you liked something in it

As always this is not a lesson in shop safety I assume that anyone trying this knows the basics to advanced tool and shop safety. For my money you should have to wear eye protection and gloves just to read a post like this, let alone try it, but no one at the health and safety office will answer my letters :(

I thought I'd try something a little different and a lot new (for me), after trying out a lot of combo woo combinations I just decided to use two woods I'd like to have on one knife and found some spare curly maple and walnut pieces too small for a knife scale on there own but perfect for this.

As it turned out they were different heights so getting the pieces cut wasn't as straight line as I'd hoped for, but I think it was worth it, I'm pretty happy this turned out so well!

After a lot of internal debate I decided to stain the scales as well, I think i made the right choice I like the way stain can bring out the burl on a piece like this curly maple and it helps to seal and protect the wood as well as the linseed oil treatments I use.

I used simple and classic brass for the pin and lanyard tube.

It still needs a sheath (nearly done, and maybe a bead, though i can't decided whether to use curly maple or walnut for it :)

I think it looks freaking great, feels nice to.