R G Rizzle and Jk Knives on offer

A leather sheath is my favorite combo, especially if the knife has a wood handle :) anyway one of my favorite Leather workers has joined up with my favorite custom knife maker, JK Knives, and they have produced somehtign pretty special, thought I'd post the link:

http://www.rgrizzleleather.com/handmade-knives.html

If I was asked to recommended something right now, this would be it.

Shrade 881 rehab

Couldn't resit this little guy at the flee market yesterday for $5, playing with some ideas on how to clean it up (take it apart? just clean it?)

before pictures:

It didn't look very good, I'll grant you, but those scales are lovey and the blades opened, better then some, even if they didn't "snap"

main blade clearly broken off but the sheepfold didn't look rith either on closer inspection

Dated it to the 1973-2004 tang stamp, certainly after the 50's when they stopped using bone on the scales, so this is jigged plastic of some kind, feel nice and look Schrade pretty to me

not easy to get this picture, probably for the best :p

lots of pitting and scratches on bolsters

rust in joints

don't you think it's pretty though?

thinking time

During:

I had a friend in mind for this knife (excuse to buy it = found) he likes stockmans and well, it's old and pretty. Anyway I hadn't re-ground blades before, but I used a simple dremel grinding tool at a medium speed and a lot of water on rags and sponges and in cups to make sure it stayed cool and didn't ruin the heat treatment - basically the end of the knife FYI.

Decided the spay blade may as well get some re-grinding as well

kept the blade shape on this one but decided to 'sharpen" it up a little at it's point

 I put secondary grind on the top of the blades as well, especially on the main blade as i had to point the point so far down past the original one the grind was a lot thicker here and would have made the point useless and sharpening impossible (almost) if not.

 I'd already gone over it eliminating rust and such with up to 600 grit sand paper, but i was concered not to take the age off (just the old), or make ti too polished, so kept the deeper scraatches and pitting. I think it kinda looks pretty with it :)

main blade = wharncliff-y thing

 I was happy with the grinding job (eliminating the grinding marks took a while but was satisfying work) but I couldn't decided if I liked the blade shape I'd given it while trying to save as much blade as possible. In the end i considered making it a tanto-ish knife since I knew my friend to like that kinda blade, but before I could try it i decided I really did like it...go figure.

the shield did get cleaned up but found a lot of deeper scratches on it which i left, guess it was always rubbing up against something in someones pocket

 I sharpened it up then decided i need to do some more rehabbing, bad idea by the way, first time I'd broken the "don't work with a sharp knife unless it's covered up safely" rule. by lucky i still have all my fingers, because ti came up sharp! even for my skills, at least it meant the heat treat hadn't been ruined!

After:

What can i say, I was very happy with myself, although I couldn't decide if it looked like I had done anything!

I really liek the finished shape of the - now - pen blade

I keep notes as i work so i don't forget where I am at - I'm very forgetful - probably why i didn't lose any fingers though!

Still looked to em as if the sheepfold came over to far but it all fit

 Alas even after a lot of flushing with WD40 and some other stuff I thought to try out (including Goo Gone) I couldn't get the snap back into the closing of the two smaller blades (main blade had it fine.) But the snap on opening the blades was nice and medium, so I decided it was okay, plenty of work left int eh old gal, you just have to be sure to close the blades by hand...

next to a 34OT - one of my favorites - that has the same aged tang stamp but looks newer to me

 I liekd it enough i had a hard time lettign go of it, but it did inspire me to clean up my often carried 34OT

Keep thinking about making the 34OT's spay a pen blade now ...

In hand

by itself, more then enough knife even for a Knife nut in my opinion :p

Thanks for checking it out

Work in progress

*Warning this thread is just for me to dump pictures and quick snippets of stuff before they become posts, so there will be errors both factual and typos, spelling errors etc. 

You've been warned so don't make me bitch about it :)

This is a "WIP" post, or a Work in Progress post, where I'll be posting pictures and some updates on my latest attempts and projects, they won't be full descriptions, because whose got time, right? and I'll turn it into a regular post as it finishes up and keep this WIP thread linked on the right of the screen for the next project. make sense? Cool

Schrade 34OT

JK Pooka

JK Pocket Muk

JK Pocket Muk

rehab Schrade 880

Schrade 880 mod

Handle for JK EDC Kephart in rosewoood Burl

The EDC Kephart is (if memory serves) 6.5" overall with a 3 " blade and 1" tall, it's about as perfect of a size to carry around with you as your can possibly get. It's also modeled on JK's signature knife, the larger JK Kephart.

I'm stealing this from Jk's website, hope he doesn't mind :)

 The Kephart being a very old and favored knife of Horace Kephart, the Great American woodsman and travel writer of Great Smoky Mountain fame. If not all, then most custom makers have a version of this knife. JK's best selling model if the Kephart last I checked.

From a  free source on interweb

This was my fourth handle and about the time I started to feel that maybe I could do an okay job at this

Finished picture:

How it begins:

It's make a nice "naked" knife if you ask me to

I've had the idea of an EDC (Every Day Carry) Kephart with burled wood and a mosaic pin for a while before I tried rehandling a knife at all. It was just one of those images that came to mind and got stored somewhere in my head. Being me I had to draw it out and alternatives. I'm ended up shooting for the middle fella (which I "cleverly covered in pens?):

I guess this is slightly better, I seem to get it pretty close anyhow:

I'm starting to feel repetitive going over each step so I'm going to skip around a  little here and show you all the pieces ready and waiting to be fitted.

Wantign a mosaic pin meant I had to wait a while because I had to special order it, there a little pricy and they don't give you much FYI:

In the mean time I played with staining the wood and...well...just playing

 : D

When it finally got here I, you know, sanded, affixed, sanded, and stuff, then i tried some polishing, not much, just doing some finer buffing with the linseed oil and some polishing compound

The Dremel was a gift from my wife, FYI, which I was grateful for because it makes a bunch of things a lot easier sometimes

I must have "got lucky" with the wood, it was of a very high standard, no mishaps with the burled nature of it (it was also stabilized, yay!)  and the finish that came out of it took hardly any more work then the usual several coast of linseed oil

 No gaps here : p

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, cause it's true, mostly, some mishaps and back tracking may have been left out of this version of the story, we'll never know, unless you join bladeforms - for free- , visit Jk's sub-form and track the original review down...whcih you won't do...will you? nah, nope and no, I'm safe, positive : p

Thanks for watching, reading, and such

more pictures of process