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I've been wanting to make a folding knife ever since I made a fixed
blade knife for my father-in-law for
Christmas 2014. Now I
don't know how to heat and forge a blade from scratch so I bought kits
for his and mine. And these kits are pretty easy to assemble once you
get going...but there's lots and lots of hand work to be done.
This knife kit (just like the fixed blade) came from
Jantz Supply, which has a
decent amount of knives to pick from. My only complaint with this knife
is with the instructions, they could be a little more detailed but if you're
willing to use some common sense you shouldn't have to much trouble.
This folding knife, P/N 'KV605MS Mini Sawtooth' is small but fits in
your pocket well. The length of the blade is 2 3/8" and the over
all length is 5 3/4" opened. The worst part for this build is
contouring the handle and the finish sanding. It's not hard,
it's just very 'time consuming'. But then again most projects are time
consuming if you want the end result to look nice and work right.
Almost all the parts are made out of stainless steel which is a good
thing. I bought an extra belt clip (top left) because you never know when
they might fail so having an extra one on hand is just insurance. The blade
is made from 8A stainless steel (which has slightly less carbon content
than 440c) has a drop point serrated blade (3/32 thick) which is heat
treated to 57-58 HRC and is sub-zero quenched in the initial heat
treating process to give it the proper hardness and strength. The
locking liner comes with a 1/16" 440C ball installed for a smooth
positive action.
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The assembly was straight forward and went quickly. The pivot screw
for the blade is slightly raised
and is hidden by the the stainless bolsters which are attached
with two T6 torx screws. The round recess in the bolsters cover
the pivot screw (arrow). The knife has a 600 grit bright satin finish
and will be 11/16" wide when finished.
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The profiled 1/8" Micarta handles are a bit larger than the liners for
final fitting. The handle surface is left flat for final shaping which
means you can get creative if you want.
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Here you can see the excess material around the
perimeter.
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Once I had the knife together I placed some tape on
the blade so I wouldn't
get cut and to protect the blade from scratches.
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I started sanding the perimeter of the handles first with the help of my
milling machine. I used a 1/2" diameter sanding drum with fine grit
which worked great and was fast. You could always use a file and/or a
sanding block in place of the drum sander.
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Speaking of a sanding block, I'm using one here with 320 grit paper to
smooth things out. I'm also sanding the stainless bolsters so everything
matches correctly. Now beware because the list is long for choices of
handle material. There is real wood, resin impregnated wood, plastic,
all kinds of exotic stuff, etc. The Micarta that I went with is pretty
tough and takes the weather very well.
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Here's what it looks like after a few minutes with the
sanding block. I used my belt sander to help rough the contour of the
handles and then came back with some 220 and 320 paper to finish by hand with.
After I was happy with the shape, I took everything apart and cleaned
it.
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After the sides were shaped like I wanted I was ready to layout for the
belt clip. Now the belt clip can be fastened to either side but after
messing with it for a few minutes I went with this side.
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I'm using the tape to hold the belt clip in place along with using the
holes as a drill guide. The drill size I'm using here is the tap
drill size for a 1-64 thread. Yes you read that right, a 1-64 thread is
the size of the screws that came with the belt clip. And the drill size
I'm using for this is .0595 (just under 1/16").
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Here you can see the three belt clip holes that I
drilled in the liner but still need to be tapped. I also drilled
clearance holes in the handles for the belt clip screws that were
slightly larger than the screws.
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