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:

New Knife Completion: "Top Banana" Kershaw Lahar

I'm pleased to announce the completion of my first bolstered rescale project.  This knife is a recently discontinued (and unfortunately so) Kershaw Lahar.  Ordinarily, the Lahar is pretty plain-Jane, sporting black G10 scales with a black pocket clip.  For this knife I drew inspiration from my car, a Dodge Daytona Charger, which is black and yellow.  I added black bolsters onto a yellow G10 scales, polished up the pocket clip and reprifiled the handle slightly to create a very attractive EDC knife that perfectly matches my "Top Banana" Daytona Charger.

For those interested in rescale jobs, I am taking a limited number of orders for rescale jobs.  Work starts at 50$ for basic liner lock scales with a single color of G10 and goes up in price.

New Knife Completion: Emerson Endeavor with Silver Twill

I'll go on record for openly criticizing a lot of things about Emerson knives.  While I like the profiles, wave feature and quality steels of Emerson's production knives, a lot of things about the build quality of EKI pocket knives leave a lot to be desired.  For example, the next time you pick up an Emerson, look at the milling of the spine of the blade.  It's not totally smooth.  The liners are often "sticky" and thin.  On newer Emerson knives, the nonlocking side isn't titanium, it's stainless steel.  The pocket clips are only drilled and tapped for right handed carry.  The backspacers don't line up evenly with the liners.  The list goes on.

                                       

My biggest gripe about Emerson knives is the G10 they use, which is either the fine texture G10 or their coarse texture G10, both of which rip pockets faster than Rosie O'Donnell cleans the buffet out at the Golden Corral.  That said, I like Emerson's designs enough as well to buy some models, and the problems mentioned above can be fixed with equal parts know-how, elbow grease and care attention to detail.


                                       
I bought this Emerson Endeavor as a project blade from Knifeart.com for a grand sum of 190$ shipped.  That's a lot of money to invest in a knife that you're essentially going to pimp out.  It's a risk, I know, but when I get an idea in my head for a knife it's sometimes hard to let go of that dream.  The Endeavor is a cool little pocket knife; just small enough to be legal in Raleigh, it has Emerson's wave feature and a very attractive blade shape.  The biggest thing that I like about the Endeavor as opposed to Emerson's other knives is the fact that it doesn't use Emerson's hokey thumb-disk, which I really don't care for at all.


                                      

The G10 absolutely had to go.  While the fine texture G10 isn't as bad as Emerson's coarse texture G10, it still has a tendency to eat jeans, so I swapped it for silver twill.  While I was at it, I used some of my new toxic green G10 to make a flush fitting backspacer.  Here's what the project came out looking like.  I still haven't mounted the pocket clip, but it's a pretty simple operation, just requires a little more drilling.

New Knife Mods: Custom made Backspacers

I'm really pleased to announce a cool new mod I'm offering for sale.  These new back spacers will be drop in parts designed to friction fit with your existing barrel spacers to give you a little more meat towards the rear of the knife as well as a bit more grip.

To test the concept I made my first batch for the 630 Skirmish, my favorite production knife.  It simply slips over the existing barrel spacers and fits tightly between the two frame pieces.  Later I added the 806-901 AFCK to the lineup simply out of need (it's one of my EDC knives).  These will also fit the 805-1101 TSEK and may fit other AFCK/TSEK models.  If the knife has barrel spacers and no solid backstrap, they will fit.  In the future I plan spacers for many other popular Benchmade models as well as knives from other companies, if you would like to see a specific knife get spacers email me.

These will be available for sale as a regular production item for 20$ (Moonglow and silver twill spacers add 5$) plus shipping.  Colors include but are not limited to:

-Toxic Green (Pictured)
-Yellow G10
-Blue G10
-Ruby Red G10
-Orange G10
-Orange/Black G10
-Black G10
-Black/Green G10
-Jade G10
-Green Canvas Micarta
-Silver Twill (add 5$)
-MoonGlow (pictured) (add 5$)

While in Progress: Day 2 of my Prototype folding knife build

After day one I decided to start working on the handles for my little prototype friction folder.  While the Proto will be a friction folder, the final product will be a framelock design, and so this particular knife is merely to see what shape I want my knife to be, check ergonomics, practice grinding the bevels on the blade and to make sure all the pins and pivots are in the right places.

In this case, I decided to use some cheaper G11 (what people call jade green G10 or translucent G10) for the handles.  The stuff is really, really cheap despite what custom makers will tell you, roughly half the cost of regular G10, and it makes really good material if you're just practicing.  I drilled the holes for the pivot and the tang pin before shaping the handles to something that felt ergonomic, then sculpted the handles and hand sanded them until there were no more sharp edges.  After that I used my buffing wheel to check for any low or high spots and gave it one last sanding.



The backspacer is made from two pieces of G11 laminated together so that the entire frame assembled looks like it was milled from one hunk of translucent jade green material.  Bear in mind this is only a prototype, still a work in progress and only to check the shape of the knife handle and the fit of the blade before I jet the handles out of thick (and very expensive) titanium.  It's a cute little folder, isn't it?

Previous work: Balisong Mods

So it's no secret that my customized Bali's are incredibly popular, and by far the most popular model that comes through my shop is the Bradley Mayhem.  The Mayhem is a great knife with premium materials- an S30V blade, titanium handles, anodized aluminum spacers and a really great classy design- but it lacks certain aesthetic design elements that a lot of folks like in their knives.  People like to personalize their stuff, and the knife is a reflection of the individual who owns and in this case flips it.

I began customizing knives around a year ago, and right away I was working on the Mayhem.  It's always been one of my favorite knives to work on despite the fact that it takes significantly more time to work on than other knife designs because of how many screws it has as well as how much surface area it has.  That said, I've customized many a Mayhem, and I wanted to show some of the highlights.

While in Progress: My first prototype folding knife

I'm really happy to announce that I'm beginning work on making my own folding pocket knives.  Until now my work has been exclusively with fixed blade knives and customized factory produced folders, but I've never built a custom folder.  Yesterday I began grinding the blades for the prototype of my first folding knife project.  This is a work in progress, so the final folders will look similar but be built with different hardware and a titanium framelock.

Day one: Grinding the Blade

I decided to break this build out into two jobs- grinding the blade and then building the handle.  For this project I decided to cannibalize a pivot from an Emerson CQC-7, so I drilled a quarter inch pivot hole and quarter inch stops into my .2 inch 440C stock in my blade.  Then I bossed the blade shape and began grinding the bevels.  For this prototype I used a spanto (spear point/tanto) chisel grind, the final versions will have spanto V grinds.  Then I redneck heat treated the blade and satin finished it.  The result is quite fetching.  Notice the protrusion on the rear of the tang- this is a handle I use for grinding the bevels and after the heat treat this is ground off.