I wanted to show off some work I did this afternoon for a buddy of mine who sent me his bladerunners Alpha Beast for a tune up and some custom work. He was experiencing difficulty with blade play and also having trouble with the octagonal profile of the handles on the knife. When I recieved the knife I immediatly noticed air- that is to say a large gap- between the handles and the blade where the washers weren't thick enough. Likewise one of the back standoffs, because bladerunners doesn't surface their titanium parts, was slightly too thick. The combination of these two things was causing a large amount of blade play in the knife, especially prevalent in the bite handle. The good news is mechanically, this is an extremely easy fix- I surfaced the rear standoff to the propper height and doubled the washer thickness on both handles, fully eliminating all blade/handle play in the knife.
Aesthetically, he wanted me to reduce the size of the upper swedge to turn the knife into a bowie style blade and round/contour the handles of the knife so it felt similar to his very familiar Benchmade 42. Using low speed and a ceramic Blaze belt as not to ruin the temper of the blade, I took off the upper swedge and then finished the reground portion to 300 grit to match the preexisting spine grinds. I also reprofiled the handles using 36 grit Blaze belts and progressivly worked my way up to 800 grit, then switched to a scotchbrite belt loaded with green polishing compound to give the handles a nice grey titanium semi-gloss. I finished the knife off by surfacing the insides of the handles and satin finishing/anodizing the standoffs and latch blue for some contrast.
The results speak for themselves.
-Will
