When I saw that the Para 3 had gotten a weight reduction I thought that I should try something similar with one of my favorite knives, the Dice. It's a very nice knife, good size, fantastic steel, ok flipping action and great ergos for me. But it's a bit of a boat anchor. Official weight is 105 g/ 3,7 oz which makes it feel very dense. It's around 99 g/ 3,5 oz with the ebay deep carry titanium clip. I also never cared much for the plaid cf.
The original handle scale with titanium and g10 was 28 g/ 1 oz.
I figured I could do without some of the hardware as well so I removed a standoff and its screws along with the lanyard tube. That was 3 g/ 0,1 oz. Everything helps!
I just used a regular drill and a dremel with a router kit so it's not as exact as a cnc machine but it's good enough.
I bought a sheet of g10 which was as thin as I could get away with and still make sure that she screws held everything in place. About 2,6 mm/ 0,1 inch.
Rough shape. About 14 g/ 0,5 oz which is half of what the original weighs.
Not perfect dremel router work:
Handle shaping:
Weight-check, 82 g/ 2,89 oz!
Assembled with shaped handles. I'm going to assume that I sanded at least 1 g off when I shaped the handle so I'm calling it a final weight of 81 g/ 2,85 oz. A lot closer to one oz/inch.
It's not perfect and I still need to adjust a few thing. The flipping is 90% of what it was before but I need to deepen the washer cutout a little bit because the handles are not perfectly level. I think that might cause some uneven squeezing of the bearings or something.
It's been a fun project though! Finally the weight matches the size and use of the knife for me. I hope you find some of it interesting :)
/ David
