Show your mods!

[phillipsted]

Thanks, Jack! I've always got my eyes out for unusual wood - and I get it from a wide variety of sources. The most fun source of wood is the scrap pile at my local specialty hardwood dealer (Colonial Hardwood here in VA). They toss out small and oddly shaped pieces of some really cool hardwoods. I've pulled all sorts of interesting and useful tidbits from there - and at $1 per piece, it is a great deal. My extended family also looks out for unusual pieces of wood for me year-round. Sometimes, they find reclaimed wood at flea markets, in harvested fire wood, or in local scrap piles. Always some surprises there!

I also look for interesting "turning blocks" at stores that stock material for woodturners. These are usually not fully dry and need some seasoning before you can cut off scales. However, with a bandsaw set up to resaw, you can peel off some nice scales at your desired thickness - and you can look for bookmatched pieces with unusual grain patterns.

And of course, my favorite knife-specific wood source is Mark at Burl Source. This guy gets some of the best wood out there for knife handles... You can find him over at BladeForums or google his store name. I can't recommend his material highly enough - he really knows his stuff.

TedP

[Holland]

Amazing work as always Ted

[Donut]

I wonder how it would look if I did it with my camo pm2

Yeah, the camo color is only on the surface. Underneath is more of a clear color. It might look a little funny.

[MadRookie]

The grain of the wood is simply adorable!!

:)

[Holland]

Drilled some holes to match the liners on my chaparral. Still needs some sanding but pretty happy with the initial drill

[Evil D]

Wow man that tooks some guts. I'd chamfer those holes next.

[Donut]

Holey Chaparral! :)

Is it any lighter?

[3rdGenRigger]

Holey Chaparral! :)

Is it any lighter?

That made me chuckle.

And now you can do with it like you can with a Chokwe, and by that I mean using the holes to attach it to the end of a pole...though the clip has to be removed to do so.

[MadRookie]

Hahaha.....it looks stunning, love it more than the original.

:)

[senorsquare]

... I'd chamfer those holes next.

Looks good, but yeah, I'd chamfer those holes.

[3rdGenRigger]

Just a few quick cell phone pictures...no good camera pictures of this as of yet.

[Spydersense]

Nice Branden!

[3rdGenRigger]

This is the first time I've needed to take one of my Spydercos apart. I was hesitant to do it and have been sitting on it for weeks since I bought it from Holland, but it went a lot smoother than I was expecting...took me less than 10 minutes in fact. Probably not surprising though given that I was able to remove and disassemble the foglights of my parents Grand Wagoneer when I was 5 (And when an insurance broker was at the house no less...not the best timing lol).

[hawaiihunter]

3rd gen, that "inlay" or whatever you would call it really matches your Razer Gaming Keyboard.

[3rdGenRigger]

It only glows that brightly after 10-15 seconds under my 260 lumens flashlight...it does fade, and it's not normally that bright.

[Holland]

Made the holes bigger so u matched the liners perfectly and sanded them down a bit. I think I'll leave it like this for now :D

[Holland]

stonewashed my chaparral 2 blade a couple weeks ago

[RoBoTech]

Fluted TI Military. S90V blade swap.
Anodized Gold. Flame colored pocket clip, standoffs, Lanyard tube, and screws. Screws were up graded to T-8.
Had to swap pivot, stop pin, and pivot screws to fit the blade.
Carbidized steel insert and TI lock faces.
CRK style lanyard, OD Green, with Damascus Brass Bead.

Carbidized lock faces.



Assembled knife.

[phillipsted]

I made some time to spend in the shop this weekend and finished up two mods that have been sitting on my bench for a while. The first is a Squeak modified with jigged bone scales. This is only my second or third time to use jigged bone - it is not my favorite material to work with. It tends to chip out, the dye gets all over the place until it wears down, and the smell when you cut or drill it is really bad. But I've always had a soft spot for jigged bone ever since my Grandad got me into knives almost 50 years ago. He was a Case man, and this was his favorite scale material. Nothing says "traditional" quite like dyed jigged bone...

Anyway, this is a set of bargain basement scales from Culpepper. I wanted to try it out before investing in some more expensive slabs. I drilled and counterbored these with my drill press and cut them out using my bandsaw (pee-ew!). I then contoured and sanded them down to 1500 grit. The Squeak doesn't have any washers (they are built into the FRN scales) and I think I'll need to get some phosphor bronze washers for the next time I break it down. That would make the action silky smooth.

TedP

[phillipsted]

Here's my second weekend project - a UKPK rescaled in Arizona Ironwood. These scales took some time to get prepped. When I resawed the slabs off a larger block, it exposed a lot of hairline cracks and small checks. So I drilled and counterbored the holes, cut out the scales, and roughly contoured and sanded them down to 120 grit. Then I removed the scales from the knife and coated them with thin CA glue. This filled the cracks and I sanded the CA off and polished the scales out to 1200 grit. It was topped with Ren Wax for the final finish.

TedP