It's been a week or so since my last update, and this week I decided to try a couple new things. This is my third "pimped" Emerson knife, this time a CQC-15 I got on trade. The CQC-15 is pretty standard fare for Emerson fans although it has some improvements over the Endeavor, the last Emerson I worked on. For example, the liners are thicker, the ergos are well thought out and this particular CQC-15 had a well centered blade with a reasonably nice action on it.
That said, it still had those gorram nasty jean-killers that pass for G10 scales, and I just can't stand Emerson's scales from the factory. I took the opportunity to try out some recently acquired toys that I bought for my shop, namely my new Mill/Drill that allows me to make perfect slots in my scales so I can do inlay.
The shot above shows the first scale after I did all the rough work. The scale is made of paper Micarta and inlayed with a piece of blood red G10. For those who don't know, Micarta comes in several different flavors and they all have to do with what the case material is that's impregnated with resin. Paper Micarta is the finest of the Micartas and doesn't have a well defined grain structure. This makes it looks much more natural than the Linens and so it makes great faux Ivory. G10 of course is fiberglass imbedded in resin to make it stiff, and so shows a defined grain structure which makes for a nice contrast.
After making the initial bosses of the scales, I polished and jeweled the liners. This process is pretty time consuming but makes the overall appearance of the final knife very, very classy. Some people call jeweling "engine turning" in reference to how old engines were finished back in the "good old days". It takes some skill to make everything line up properly, but as you can see it came out great.
Next I did the rough grinding on the second matching scale. For my "racing stripe" scales I decided that I'd have a single racing stripe where the thumb-disk access is. I left the locking side scale blank as the pocket clip will lend good contrast when the knife is fully assembled and the stripe would make the knife look too busy.
Next we fit everything up. Here you can see my very dirt paw holding a partially assembled CQC-15. One very little known fact about this particular Emerson- despite Emerson's attempt to cheapen their knives accrossed the board, the CQC-15 still has two Ti liners. Very cool.
Here's the other side of the handle with the locking-side scale fitted.
Here we can see my preparations for backspacer mods. As you can see (or maybe you can't), I milled out portions of the original G10 backspacer to be filled with glow marble goop. At this point I hadn't decided on what color I'd use but later I went with Violet.
Finally, I had the knife assembled albeit a little dirty. A little cleaning and the knife was ready to be filled with glow goop. I decided to go with Violet for two reasons, the first being that I'd never used it before and wanted to see how it looked and the second because none of my other colors would look good (Green would make it look Italian, Turquoise would make it look like an Aquafresh toothpaste tube and blue would be a little too jingoistic). I reshaped the liners slightly to fit my hand better, sanded off any rough spots and the rest, as they say, is history:
